My review was written in April 1989 after watching the movie on Paramount video cassette.
"The Experts" is an innocuous, simple-minded comedy vehicle for John Travolta, briefly released on January 13 by Paramount and likely to prove an effective time-killer for undemanding pay-cable and video viewers.
Shot in Canada in 1987, pic is first of three completed "comeback" films for the star, whose most recent releases "Two of a Kind" and "Perfect" flopped.
He's cast (a bit too dead-on) as a Gotham hipster who, with fellow aspiring nightclub owner Arye Gross, is drugged and shanghaied to Russia by KGB agent Charles Martin Smith.
One-joke story premise is a cousin to that old standby on Paramount's tv series "Mission: Impossible". Smith pretends the boys are in the Midwest when actually they're to serve as experts on up-to-date Americana in a KGB village, Indian Springs, whose denizen are studying to be all-American infiltrating spies.
Instead of the possible cultural clash, pic segues into a rather tired version of "Back to the Future". Ture to corny assumptions, the Russkies' image of U. S. culture is decades behind the times, so the unwitting heroes try to bring them up to date with modern music and dancing. When they talk Smith into obtaining gadgets and electronics, the townsfolk become fully Americanized. In fact they all jump at the chance to defect to the U. S. when our two dolts finally figure out thye're in the USSR.
Overly cutesy direction by SCTV comedian Dave Thomas doesn't help sustain credibility. How Travolta and Gross fail to tumble to the ruse for weeks on end is hard to swallow, as is the hokey payoff in which traditional American values and smalltown lifestyles are reaffirmed.
Travolta has fun, verging on self-parody, reliving past glories as he teaches new dance steps to sexy spy Kelly Preston and the other townsfolk. Gross is an able, wisecracking sidekick. Trouble is it's all too predictable, lacking in genuine satire and ultimately generating into slapstick when producer James Keach pops up as a Soviet ne'er-do-well pilot to help everyone escape.
"The Experts" is an innocuous, simple-minded comedy vehicle for John Travolta, briefly released on January 13 by Paramount and likely to prove an effective time-killer for undemanding pay-cable and video viewers.
Shot in Canada in 1987, pic is first of three completed "comeback" films for the star, whose most recent releases "Two of a Kind" and "Perfect" flopped.
He's cast (a bit too dead-on) as a Gotham hipster who, with fellow aspiring nightclub owner Arye Gross, is drugged and shanghaied to Russia by KGB agent Charles Martin Smith.
One-joke story premise is a cousin to that old standby on Paramount's tv series "Mission: Impossible". Smith pretends the boys are in the Midwest when actually they're to serve as experts on up-to-date Americana in a KGB village, Indian Springs, whose denizen are studying to be all-American infiltrating spies.
Instead of the possible cultural clash, pic segues into a rather tired version of "Back to the Future". Ture to corny assumptions, the Russkies' image of U. S. culture is decades behind the times, so the unwitting heroes try to bring them up to date with modern music and dancing. When they talk Smith into obtaining gadgets and electronics, the townsfolk become fully Americanized. In fact they all jump at the chance to defect to the U. S. when our two dolts finally figure out thye're in the USSR.
Overly cutesy direction by SCTV comedian Dave Thomas doesn't help sustain credibility. How Travolta and Gross fail to tumble to the ruse for weeks on end is hard to swallow, as is the hokey payoff in which traditional American values and smalltown lifestyles are reaffirmed.
Travolta has fun, verging on self-parody, reliving past glories as he teaches new dance steps to sexy spy Kelly Preston and the other townsfolk. Gross is an able, wisecracking sidekick. Trouble is it's all too predictable, lacking in genuine satire and ultimately generating into slapstick when producer James Keach pops up as a Soviet ne'er-do-well pilot to help everyone escape.