Top Secret!

Name: Top Secret!
Genre: Comedy
Released: June 8, 1984
Duration: 90 min
Rating: 68
Cast: Val Kilmer

1984

METASCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 15 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 31 Ratings

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6.9

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6.9	Your Score
6.9	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 31 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

Paramount Pictures | Release Date: June 8, 1984 | PG

Starring: Val Kilmer

Summary: A parody of WWII spy movies in which an American rock and roll singer becomes involved in a Resistance plot to rescue a scientist imprisoned in East Germany.

Director: David Zucker and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams

Genre(s): Comedy

Rating: PG

Runtime: 90 min

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Critic Reviews

Jonathan Rosenbaum

This is the least well-known of the madcap satirical comedies of Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker (Airplane!, The Naked Gun), and by all counts the weirdest. But the richness of its ideas makes it my favorite. The plot combines the rock musical with the spy thriller (not to mention assorted other genres), and the comic invention is fairly constant. Read full review

Roger Ebert

This movie will cheerfully go for a laugh wherever one is even remotely likely to be found. It has political jokes and boob jokes, dog poop jokes, and ballet jokes. It makes fun of two completely different Hollywood genres: the spy movie and the Elvis Presley musical. Read full review

Empire Kim Newman

Jokes so stupid as to seem almost surreal, an amazing range of cultural referents and a smattering of genuinely witty conceits. Read full review

Gene Siskel

A bunch of scattered laughs. [22 June 1984, p.5-12]

David Ansen

Like "Airplane!", the film is teeming with funny ideas. Unlike "Airplane!", the majority do not come off...Top Secret! is mildly amusing at best. [25 June 1984, p.69]

Gary Arnold

I suppose it's also less than inspired to portray a ballet company where the codpieces of the male dancers bulge out so far that the ballerina can cover the width of the stage using them as steppingstones. Nevertheless, some dumb, obvious gags have a way of working by impudently flaunting their dumbness and obviousness, and this appears to be a textbook example. In fact, for the juvenile public that should supply its best audience, Top Secret! may serve as a veritable primer of irresistibly terrible wheezes. Read full review

Jay Scott

Kilmer is an improvement on Robert Hays of Airplane], but both gents perform with the facility you'd expect from a random sampling of Gentlemen's Quarterly models; like any svelte clotheshorse, Kilmer is good-looking yet self-effacing and he doesn't seem in the least perturbed that his wardrobe upstages him.[25 June 1984]

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User Reviews

matthias17

Apr 23, 2023

Classic, hilarious, with a mix of great sense of humor and light-hearted enjoyment. Movies like this makes me want to turn back time when movies were actually this enjoyable. It's a shame they don't make movies like this anymore. This was worth every second.