Genre Guesstimation – Top Secret! (1984)

The idea behind this feature (Genre Guesstimation) is for me to watch a bunch of new movies (or ones that I haven’t seen many times) from the chosen monthly GG genre in order to expand my knowledge of movies within that particular genre.

This month’s Genre has been chosen by Ashleigh of The Movie Oracle and it is Spoof/Parody Movies.

Please get me your submissions by the 25th of November by sending them to spoofashleigh@movierob.net

Try to think out of the box! Great choice Ashleigh!

Let’s see if I felt that this movie would be worthy of being in the company of my others favorite movies in the genre of Parody/Spoof Movies.…

“I know a little German. He’s sitting over there.” – Hillary

Number of Times Seen – At least 5 times (Cable in the 80’s, Theater in ’93, video and 16 Nov 2017)

Brief Synopsis – A rock and Roll star traveling in German territory to play a concert gets involved with the allied underground.

My Take on it – I have always been a fan of the ucker-Abrams-Zucker films and think that the Airplane films along with the first Naked Gun movie are superb parodies.

That being said, this film leaves much to be desired.

The jokes here are too stale most of the time and maybe will be able to elicit a smile but no where near the laugh out loud aspects of comedy.

They get many of the ideas taken from WWI spy films right, but many of the jokes just don’t work as well as they could.

The choice of Val Kilmer in the lead is a mediocre one because he just isn’t able to make us believe that he is a popular singer.  His comic timing is also slightly off which takes away from making some of his jokes funnier than they truly are.

The music video at the beginning of the film is hilarious because of it’s sheer and daring premise.

Some of the jokes regarding word play and even the naming of characters work really well and serve as a great reminder to how great and hilarious ZAZ team can be when they try harder.

Bottom Line – The ZAZ team do a fine job with spoofing spy and WWII films but most of the jokes completely miss their mark.  Kilmer wasn’t the greatest choice for a lead in a spoof film. The music video is hilariously shot and some of the jokes regarding characters names and the play on words work well, but overall, the film isn’t funny enough for a ZAZ spoof film.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – The idea of skeet surfing came out of the Zucker brothers trying to outdo each other at press junkets. They would specifically concoct outlandish stories to amuse themselves and bewilder journalists. (From IMDB)

Genre Grandeur Worthy? – Not really!  This is a film where more jokes miss than hit even when the ones that are on target are hilarious.

Rating – BAFTA Worthy

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