Top Secret! (1984)

In elementary school, I loved wacky nonstop comedies like The Naked Gun and Hot Shots. Today, I believe that Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker never quite recaptured the magic of Airplane! and all lost their momentum for good by the mid-'90s. But what about halfway between AP and TNG?

I'm guessing TS is set in the early '60s, based on protagonist Nick Rivers (Val Kilmer's screen debut) resembling an Elvis Presley character but clearly mocking the Beach Boys for his opening number. It's also set mostly in an East Germany that looks more like the Third Reich. As a guest singer, Nick enjoys a privileged status but is strongly advised to keep his nose clean. He stops doing so when he falls for Hillary (Lucy Gutteridge), a wanted member of the curiously French Resistance. Together, they seek to free her father (Michael Gough, 11 years before reuniting with Kilmer for Batman Forever), a scientist forced to make weaponry for the government.

That's the sort of humor I sooner expect from Mel Brooks. As you can imagine, both the Germans and the French are hardly authentic. Neither is the one Swede (Peter Cushing). Well, the '80s never were big on PC.

I'm more concerned about the combination of fairly explicit naughtiness and severe lowbrow. The rating is PG, but remember, this was back before PG-13 existed. At the same time, some gags, such as a giant pigeon statue pooping in the background, are dopey and/or immature enough to make me feel embarrassed for the writers. Maybe the target demographic was sixth-graders.

Granted, TNG might have been just like that without bothering young me. But I don't picture myself getting as much out of TS, if only because it's not quite as rapid-fire. Indeed, after characters say their situation sounds like a bad movie, they spend an uncomfortably long time shifting their gaze to the camera.

As an action flick, it's too much of a joke for excitement. As a musical, it's passable. There aren't a whole lot of songs performed in full. About half are old classics; the rest are parodies. I wouldn't buy the advertised soundtrack.

TS is too hit-and-miss to stir my nostalgia nowadays. It brought me some smiles, but they had trouble sticking around.