No 'Airplane!' but still fun

Rating: 7/10 (15 June 2003)

'Top Secret' is one of the comedies from Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker. During the years they have brought the wonderful 'Airplane!', the very funny 'Naked Gun'-series, two 'Hot Shots!'-movies, 'Jane Austen's Mafia!' and 'Rat Race'. This movie belongs in that list of very funny movies. It is not as good as 'Airplane!' or the first 'Naked Gun' but it comes close.
Val Kilmer is Nick Rivers, an American rock n' roll singer, who comes to East-Germany. To tell you the truth I can't remember really why he did that, but of course that doesn't matter very much. In East-Germany he meets Hillary Flammond (Lucy Gutteridge). Her father is imprisoned by the East-German regime and Nick wants to help Hillary to find him back. The movie is not really about the plot but to tell more would reveal some very funny surprises.
A lot of movie references will pas during the movie, the most obvious are probably from 'The Blue Lagoon' and all the Elvis Presley musicals. It is a little hard to explain the movie but consider a scene where Nick and Lucy want to hide. They pass a closet that says "Janitor", you see them in almost every building. They open the closet and behind the door we see the actual janitor in a very small space. They close the door and enter a room that says "props". In the room we see actual props. There are many of those scene and most of them work. I had a good time watching this.