Mid Secret

Sure, you all know the hit song "Skeet Surfing" from the movie Top Secret! (1984). But did you know Nick Rivers other two songs on the top 10, "Skeet City" and "Your Skeetin' Heart"? I didn't until someone mentioned them on Twitter. Then we had to watch the movie again.

Val Kilmer is teen heart-throb Nick Rivers. He is roped into a cultural exchange program with East Germany by Omar Sharif. At a dinner, he sees Lucy Gutteridge being menaced by the authorities, and tells them she is with him. It turns out that she is a member of the Underground Resistance. They dance a stately waltz that includes nose tweeking and rump slapping, then he gets up and sings "Tutti-Frutti". Soon, he finds himself deeply involved in the French Underground, fighting Nazis, because the movie takes place in the 1940s, as well as the 50s and 80s. 

But this is an Abrahams, Zucker, and Zucker movie. You know, the Airplane guys. So nothing has to make sense. It is filled with silly jokes and set pieces. Some of the subtitled dialog is German, some of it is Yiddish curses. Their are sight gags, like a foreground telephone that looks huge in perspective and turns out to be huge in actuality. (This is a reference to, I believe, a Hitchcock trick of forced perspective.) There is also a whole scene where I noticed that the "German" dialog was actually English in reverse. Then I realized that the whole scene was being played in reverse, just to allow a few simple gags. 

I have to say, however, that the rate of gags per second is much lower than Airplane. There are also several songs, both 50s standards and pastiches thereof. These are actually sung by Kilmer, and pretty well too. But they are neither great enough or silly enough to do much more than fill out the time. The originals could have been included in one of those teen exploitation movies that MST3K riffs and not be out of place. Even "Skeet Surfing", the funniest of the songs, is a little too exactly Beach Boys.

So, second tier AZZ. Still pretty funny. And I'm sure this set Kilmer up to be Jim Morrison in a few years.