User Reviews

It's so stupid it's hilarious. My husband and I were laughing nearly the entire movie and I found myself repeating, "What is even happening?!" over and over. But yet...it's somehow incredibly entertaining.

In East Germany, the American rock and roll singer Nick Rivers (Val Kilmer) meets Hillary Flammond (Lucy Gutteridge) in a fancy restaurant. Hillary is a member from the resistance and her hope is to rescue her father, the scientist Dr. Paul Flammond (Michael Gough), who is imprisoned by the Germans to develop a powerful weapon. Nick is arrested and sent to prison for helping Hillary and he meets Dr. Flammond in his laboratory. Hillary helps him to escape during a show and when he tells that he has met Dr. Flammond in the prison to Hillary, they decide to seek out the resistance leader. When they meet him, they discover that Nigel (Christopher Villiers) was Hillary's first lover. Further, they learn that there is a traitor in the resistance. Who might be the traitor?

"Top Secret" is a very funny comedy by Jim Abrahams and David Zucker. The plot is a parody to World Was II movies with the French resistance and it is impossible not laughing along the adventures of Nick Rivers in the East Germany. Val Kilmer steals the movie wit ha magnificent performance and singing most of the songs. In the end, time is cruel to everyone. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Top Secret – Super Confidencial" ("Top Secret – Super Confidential")

Note: On 24 Sep 2017, I saw this film again.

An American rock and roll idol goes behind the iron curtain (while there was one!) for a culture fest but instead becomes involved in the resistance movement.

Forget about the film itself, the very idea of an Elvis Presley movie being mixed with a French resistance film and produced by the Airplane! crew is enough for laugh number one. Not only is this a bizarre world but seems to be playing games with time and history, the communist East Germany being portrayed as a kind of war time Nazi set-up!

Kilmer does well with an impossible role to the point where you wonder if he didn't miss his vocation. He can sing and dance better than many real singers and he proved in The Doors that he is really a major musical force. Strangely it is rumoured that he didn't realise this was a satire!

The stupidity of many Elvis movies and those Saturday morning children's reels (scientist and beautiful daughter) are taken to the cleaners and you have fantastic sight gags. The "falling guard" gag is one of the best sight gags in the history of movies - I challenge anyone not to laugh at it.

I enjoy a stupid movie every now and then and admit I enjoyed this one. Clearly the authors know little about German history or European culture and the little they do know seems cribbed from watching bad B movies on the subject, but what the hell. This is too stupid for anyone to get seriously uptight about. "How silly can you get?" sings Kilmer at one point in the film: Maybe a little, but not that much!

Maybe some people just don't get it. This was made by the team of Zucker-Abraham-Zucker, responsible for "Airplane", "The Kentucky Fried Movie", and the "Naked Gun" series, so who cares if it doesn't accurately reflect society? It's not meant to be a satire, folks, it's a very broad parody!

I recently watched this again, and I caught something I had never caught before. In the dinner scene at the "Hotel Gay Schluffen", Nick Rivers (played by Val Kilmer, and this may be the best thing he's ever done), American rock star, is told that he needs a jacket to eat in the dining room, but the restaurant will provide one. In the next scene we can see him in the background having a jacket tailor-made! The reason it's hard to catch is that there's exposition going on in the foreground (a ZAZ trademark). It's funny, but the amazing thing is that I've seen this movie many times over a period of something like 20 years, and I'd never noticed that before.

I believe that this is one of the marks of a great spoof, that you can watch it many times and still pick up jokes you've never noticed before. Like ZAZ's other masterworks, this one is packed with hilarious one-liners and sight gags. Watch for the scene in the Swedish bookshop that's filmed backwards, the way the verses to the East German National Anthem keep getting longer and longer when translated into English, and the scene where an unfortunate agent is crushed inside a car (and what happens with him afterwards!). And this doesn't even scratch the surface. If "Top Secret!" isn't ZAZ's funniest movie it's only because it has such strong competition. The men were comedic geniuses when they were together.

Val Kilmer was hilarious as Nick Rivers, and the movie has a strong supporting cast, including Lucy Gutteridge as Nick's love interest Hillary (I wonder how Ms. Clinton would feel if she knew her name means "She whose bosoms defy gravity"?), Christopher Villiers as Nigel, her ex-boyfriend (they spent some time stranded on a deserted island together), and Jeremy Kemp as the evil General Streck. Also look out for Peter Cushing, Omar Sharif, and Ian McNiece (hilarious as a spy whose cover is selling souvenirs, novelties, and party tricks). And watch out for the French resistance (who knows what they're doing in East Germany?), each one of whose names is a pun on a French word or phrase (Chocolate Mousse, Deja Vu, etc.)

The plot? Does it matter? Something about the East Germans planning to take over the world while everybody's paying attention to an international cultural show they're putting on (Nick is the American representative), and the spies who are trying to stop it. But that's not the point, the point is the comedy, and I could go on and on about the many hilarious jokes but I'm not going to; let me just say without ruining anything that the funniest scenes in the movie involve a cow.

It's usually overlooked, curiously enough, when talking about the great comedies, but there's no doubt about it, "Top Secret!" IS one of the great comedies of our time.

This is absolutely freaking hilarious. Val Kilmer does a bang up job as Nick Rivers in this one. I almost wish they would do a sequel now in 2022 after watching it again and I'm certain that Val Kilmer wouldn't mind.

are usually the ones with plots of their own. This one is such a spoof and it is very funny. You don't have to see any movies to find this funny either. You just have to have seen parts of an Elvis movie over the years or saw a scene or two from an old espionage flick. You don't have to watch an entire movie to get the jokes. Val Kilmer is very funny here as is all the cast. The jokes are great even with some of them being a bit dated. The resistance group is great, the escape, everything in here is really funny. After "Airplane" this one ranks right up there with the best spoof movies made.

Top Secret is one of the funniest, most off-the-wall movies ever filmed. Featuring a young Val Kilmer, I think Top Secret is the best of all spoof films (Spaceballs is a close second). This thing spoofs everything, Beach Boy's songs, spy pictures, war movies, westerns, and even Elvis is not safe. It's ridiculous, outrageous, hilarious, and all in the name of good fun. The spit gag has to be my favorite bit. You've seen it in countless movies: the hero is being verbally accosted by the villain and he spits in his face. This time, however, the hero is on the other side of the room. Other memorable jokes include the skeet songs, the anal intruder, the "cow" scenes, and the backwards bit with Peter Cushing. There are countless little things like that which make Top Secret a definite cult classic and a certifiable must-see.

"Wish they all could be double barrel, wish they all could be double barrel guuuuuuuns."

Nick Rivers (Val Kilmer) is a big star of the gun-happy surfer culture with his smash hit Skeet Surfing. He goes to East Germany to play at a festival. He comes to help resistance member Hillary Flammond on the run. He is imprisoned and beaten. He manages to escape to a secret lab with Hillary's father Dr. Paul Flammond who is forced to develop a secret weapon against submarines.

The team of Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker follow their highly successful Airplane! with this spoof of a Presley and spy movie. It has the same sense of irreverent fun. Val Kilmer is pretty good but there is nobody equivalent to Leslie Nielsen in this movie. Also going back to Elvis Presley from the 60s is not as immediate as the disaster movies that were still in the conversation of the day. Overall, it's a fun little film.

This movie truly is another great work from David Zucker and Jim Abrahams team. In some scenes you will laugh so hard that you have to pause the movie, laugh for five minutes then play it again. Also, Val Kilmer does a great acting for his first movie!

This movie may not be the best comedy ever made but it still is among the top of its genre and a great movie to watch even and specially if you're not in a good mood.

If you found "Airplane!" funny then watching this one is highly recommended. It has the same stupid and totally funny jokes and same sense of humor. It also is the best parody of WW2 spy movies. Rent or buy the DVD and enjoy it!

In his first leading role, Val Kilmer plays Nick Rivers, an Elvis like pop star sent to Germany on a good will tour as a fill in for Leonard Bernstein. Once there he gets caught up in all sorts of misadventures that lead to him being a part of the French under ground resistance. Lucy Gutteridge is his German lover.

An often overlooked - maybe even misunderstood - film from the Zucker/Abrams/Zucker team (who gave us "Airplane!") the film takes pot shots at "The Man Who Knew Too Much", pintos, rock 'n roll, Nazis, and other various spy movies with more gags than you can shake a stick at. A hilarious romp of madness.

Val himself is pretty funny here, managing to both wink and not wink at the camera as he is placed in a number of absurd situations. Also interesting of note is that this one features Michael Gough, who would later play Alfred in the Batman series, and Val himself would later play Batman.

"Top Secret!" is a comedy that parodies spy films from the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team that created "Airplane!" (1980) and later the "Naked Gun" films. The story follows the exploits of Nick Rivers, played by Val Kilmer, as he gets tangled in a plot in East Germany. Strangely and amusingly enough, though, East Germany's officials deliberately resemble Nazis.

Val Kilmer does well with the humor and musical numbers in the lead. Lucy Gutteridge is also appropriate as Nick's love interest. The resistance members and East German/Nazi officers were all well-cast as well. There are some brief but nice appearances from Omar Sharif and Peter Cushing.

The film has a number of funny moments, such as the singing of the East German anthem or Nick's air duct escape. I also enjoyed the musical numbers, particularly "How silly can you get?" However, I didn't find this film to be as consistently funny as "Airplane!" or the "Naked Gun". "Top Secret!" effectively mocks spy films, but isn't as amusing as other films from the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team.

"Top Secret!" was one of the earliest spoof movies that I remember watching back in my childhood. It was funny, hilarious and silly back then, and still does hold its own even today. There are funnier spoof movies today, but "Top Secret!" is still worth watching.

If you are familiar with Abrahams and Zucker movies then you know what you are in for here; a movie full of really odd comedy spoofs and gags.

The core essence of the story is about an American rock and roll singer named Nick who is on a promotional tour to East Germany during World War II. Here he becomes entangled in a conflict between the Nazis and the French resistance.

There was actually a fairly good ensemble of talents in the movie, including Omar Sharif, Val Kilmer and Jeremy Kemp.

"Top Secret!" does have some funny moments and does bring about a good laugh here and there.

If you enjoy movies such as "Hot Shots", "Airplane!" and the like, then you will also like "Top Secret!".

The Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team, master of the rapid-fire humor and insane spoofs, strike again! This time with "Top Secret!", which is a very underrated movie that, in my humble opinion, is just as good as "Airplane!" (which of course is considered their best work).

I don't understand it - what makes this film inferior to "Airplane!"? There are just as many jokes, the jokes are just as good, the timing is as always perfect. Am I missing something? Is it just that "Airplane!" was bold in breaking barriers for spoof movies, setting a precedent that "Top Secret!" was just there to follow?

That's not to diminish the quality of "Airplane!", which is one of my favorites. But what's wrong with "Top Secret!"? Why only a 6.6 rating? It must be from those purists who don't understand movies like this, and don't like this movie because the plot is not as well-developed as the plot of "Airplane!" Don't get me wrong - ordinarily a more developed plot only makes a movie funnier, but in the case of a spoof like this, the plot isn't important (it has often been said that the plot is just a "clothesline" for the jokes in such movies). Those purists completely miss the point of this movie.

Watch this movie unless you're one of those blasted aforementioned purists. If that is the case, go watch "The Philadelphia Story" for the thousandth time.

Parody of WWII spy movies in which an American rock and roll singer (Val Kilmer) becomes involved in a Resistance plot to rescue a scientist (Michael Gough) imprisoned in East Germany.

The film features a very young, very skinny Val Kilmer (look at those tiny legs). And apparently he not only does his own singing, but was dating Cher at the time... what the heck? She is 13 years older than him... weird.

The German jokes are great, knowing they are not real German. Sadly, I do not know Yiddish so I do not fully get the humor and had to read the translations online. I suspect for those who speak it the humor is more instant and the film is better. Oh well.

There was a time when spoof movies were funny. They relied on visual gags. They relied on jokes. They relied on ridiculous situations, funny characters and subverting expectations. In short, they relied on comedy to sell the product. Then filmmakers got lazy. Really lazy. Instead of carefully crafting a joke or scene they went for pop culture references that immediately date the movie and make it unwatchable a few years later. But during the 80's we had a series of gems of the genre and this is possibly one of the funniest.

The story, if you can call it such, deals with a young man played by Val Kilmer who's the biggest rock star of his time. His big hit, "Skeet Surfing" where people take to the waves on their surfboards and try to hit their targets while wielding shotguns. Silly? Of course. That's what this movie is all about.

His adventures take him to Europe where he fights against the East Germans, falls in love and Pac Man shows up in one scene for no readily explained reason. The jokes and sight gags come at you very fast sometimes in the foreground, often times in the background and everywhere else. One example is he goes to a fancy restaurant for dinner but they won't let him in without a jacket. So instead of pulling some musty old jacket out of the closet, they bring in a tailor to make him a tuxedo which is ready in five minutes so he can have dinner. Some of the jokes land, some don't but they're all played straight and no attention it called to them. It's as if nothing is out of the ordinary which makes it much funnier.

This movie is in the style of classics such as Airplane, not whatever Selzter and Friedberg monstrosity has come out this year. It's funny. You should give it a watch.

If you try and ignore this "Spy" offering from the Airplane team, you won't last long. When it's on your TV screen there'll soon be something so outrageously daft that you have to at least stare in dismay and amazement.

Yes, it's a pity it hasn't got Leslie Nielsen at the helm but the young Elvis-sort of looking Val Kilmer is good, but not brilliant. It's just not in the class of the best Abrahams and Zucker's, especially the fore- mentioned Airplane, hence my four stars.

Sent off to cold-war East Germany and playing rock'n'roll to an audience not yet immersed in such, at a concert that aims to unite west and east Berlin, Nick Rivers (Kilmer) encounters an array of mishaps, from the outset. Naturally, the opposite sort of happens and I'd like to say that plot details are fairly useless here and they're pointless in a script where gag after gag is out for laughs, most of them hitting some spot, or another. There's Omar Sharif as you've never seen, or ever thought you'd see him and a turn from Peter Cushing, too.

Venturing into a parody of WWII films, including The Great Escape, it ends up with a herd of cows wearing wellington boots...What happens between is fast and funny and whilst Top Secret isn't the funniest thing you'll see, it's good and worthy of including in the 'ones to see'.

So many amazing gags here, coming one after another. Not every one works, but you don't have to dwell on the clunkers because there'll be another ten before you know it. A couple of amazingly done off-the-wall scenes (underwater, backwards part) and lots of songs make this something to behold. It's so great, and somewhat passed over, but shouldn't be!

One of the best comedy movies I have ever seen. Almost every scene contain joke or preparing for joke. Unexpected jokes suddenly appear. Year after year many comedy movies made but this movie is still funnier than most of them.

Although story of the movie is very weak. I think they made this for purely humor. Maybe the ironic agent movie thinking can cause this.

Production is moderate, not as bad as the story .

But the most irritating part of the movie is playback scenes, they are completely unrelated from the movie.

Eventhough it contain many weak structure element, I laughed a lot while watching.

Watch it!

Knowing that "Top Secret!" comes from the guys who gave us "Airplane!" and the "Naked Gun" movies, I shouldn't have to really explain it. The plot has rock 'n' roll star Nick Rivers (Val Kilmer) getting sent to East Germany to rescue a scientist (Michael Gough). Of course in reality, the movie's an excuse for a gag every minute. Making fun of both the American and Soviet spheres of influence, this flick pulls no punches. I suspect that you'll really like the scene where Hillary Flammond (Lucy Gutteridge) and Nick explain their names to each other, and then where they introduce the resistance fighters. All in all, a wonderfully goofy romp. As a side note, Val Kilmer and Michael Gough later co-starred in "Batman Forever", although Jim Carrey stole the show in that one.

In between their most successful films – Airplane, Naked Gun and Hot Shots – the ZAZ team modestly spoofed the espionage and conspiracy theory thrillers in Top Secret! The film involves American teen idol Nick Rivers (Val Kilmer in his first big screen role) attending a culture festival in Nazified East Germany. The festival merely is a cover-up for the sinister and evil practices of the Nazis who kidnapped an eminent scientist. Nick quickly interferes in all this and ends up as member of a resistance-party, existing of French dudes with funny-sounding names and weird comical habits (like drinking gasoline…) . Remaining loyal to the ZAZ trademarks, 'Top Secret!' is one giant running gag and a spitfire of chuckles in which absolutely NOTHING has to be taken seriously. The European-minded character of this film provided the writers with the occasion to make fun of the typical French, German and Swedish stereotypes and that forms a perfect contrast with the American surf-generation. As usual in this type of films, the widely elaborated jokes miss their target (sometimes they even are painfully unfunny) but the smaller background slapstick is hilarious and almost causes you a stomach pain from laughing. The open assaults to immensely successful cinema classics like 'the Great Escape', 'Wizard of Oz' or 'The Blue Lagoon' is something you either love or hate, but it perfectly reflects the type of over-the-top humor these writers want to bring. Val Kilmer does well in his first major role and his youthful charm helps increasing his teen-popstar credibility. Furthermore, there are a few delightful small roles for authentic cinema veterans such as Omar Shariff, Michael Gough and my personal favorite Peter Cushing. Top Secret isn't Abraham's and the Zucker brother's best work, but it's still great entertainment and the quality balances somewhere between 'The Kentucky Fried Movie' and 'Airplane'.

Following the popular success of "Airplane!" and its less acclaimed sequel, the ZAZ trio was back to what I believe to be the funniest comedy ever: "Top Secret!" a hilarious parody of the WWII spy films and the 50-60's rock-themed movies. Speaking of rock'n'roll, one of the most defining songs of the film performed by Val Kilmer aka Nick Rivers is titled "How Silly Can you Get?" which sounds like a self-reflexive motto.

"Top Secret!" probably features the highest laughs-out-loud-per-minute ratio from any movie, as there is not one single moment where the action isn't punctuated by a gag, and that this very gag doesn't work. Everything in "Top Secret!" is both hilarious on an anarchic and cathartic level in the way it plunges you into a never-ending positive mindset. You may say that this is the very principle of a comedy, what's more a spoof movie, but it seems like "Top Secret!" has been specially concocted for pure and genuine amusement, and while the much more respected "Airplane!" has its slower moments, especially during the flash-back parts, "Top Secret!" was hilarious from A like Abrahams to Z like Zucker brothers.

There are two kinds of gags in "Top Secret!", the direct and the indirect one. The direct is immediate, mostly visual and slapstick, like a "find him and kill him" stamp or a sunbathing girl leaving boob-holes in the sand. The best gags are extended and feature a lot of dancing like the ball scene, the outrageous ballet sequence or a feet-view panic scene. Anyway, whether it's an offensive national anthem, a singing horse, a little German, an over-hilarious moment when Nick is about to be executed and an old lady slowly approaches to pick up the phone, any attempt to list the audio-visual gags of the film is as ludicrous as trying to define which is the funniest. The indirect gag is the elaborated one, already funny by itself but leading to a much more delightful punch-line.

The first one involves a weird shot illustrating the road taken by Nick Rivers and his manager, the map looks more and more familiar until Pac-Man makes his appearance, the very gag that sets the tone of the film. When Omar Sharif as Agent Cedric meets a colleague disguised as a party tricks vendor, the whole interaction is funny enough but the icing on the cake comes with the "You dropped your phony dog pooh", an item which obviously is not sold. The gag works even more because we expect it, like when Nick is introduced to the French Resistance, what would you expect from a man named "Déjà Vu" apart from "Have we not met before?" It could have concluded here yet the French sounding names punch-line was with the black guy named 'Chocolate Mousse", which says a lot about an era where anything was acceptable in the name of pure comedy.

I don't mean to be too analytical, but my regard for "Top Secret!" is due to one of the two funniest and creative gags from any film, starting with the Swedish bookstore sequence, a cinematic achievement that would have made Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin proud. During that part, there is a gradual suspicion that we're not watching a normal scene, even for a spoof movie, there is something weird in the walking and the talking that gets funnier as it is more noticeable, the scene becomes hilarious when we get the point and yet it goes on and on, a book getting in the right place immediately, dust from ear to mouth, and finally Nick and Hillary 'sliding up' a pole. The sequence goes from funny to not funny anymore until it becomes funny again with the throw away gag of the puppy going backwards leaving the Swedish bookstore owner in a priceless doubted expression.

The other and maybe more memorable one, as it made it in the poster involves a clever cow disguise that looks like a real cow from our point of view, it's simple but someone should have thought about that. Now, it became a comedic landmark used in many comedies when a guy disguise as an animal, inopportunely choosing the female one, and invites a male on heat to come on him, but back then it was new that even pushed the outrageousness by involving a little veal thirsty for milk, the villain's reaction (in the disguise) is a laugh-riot. That's the secret of "Top Secret!", a comedy that doesn't take itself seriously except for its genuine desire to make us laugh. The rest of the gags are as good as it gets, and features many fourth-wall breaking, like when Nick and Hillary feels that the romance "makes it's like a bad movie" and then they look at us, and many film references are made, notably one hilarious climax in a sub-aquatic Western bar, and a clever farewell a la "Wizard of Oz".

"Top Secret!" is made in such a way, that we either enjoy a gag or wait for one to come, so there's no time break. The only little pauses are provided by these moments when we can enjoy Val Kilmer's musical performances but the humor is never away. But my enjoyment of the film is proportional to my sadness to see it so often overlooked by the peers and movie viewers, playing on anagrams, I want to say that "TOP SECRET!" is a comedy "TO RESPECT!". Indeed, when I checked the list of AFI's Top 100 Laughs, I was surprised not to see "Top Secret!" listed while "Fargo" and "Jerry Maguire" and less 'lol'ling comedies were, I'm even surprised that the film is hardly mentioned among the greatest parodies or that it didn't have any nominations for the Golden Globes.

Seriously, I can't see, regarding "Top Secret!", how funnier can a movie get.

An American singer is scheduled to perform in East Germany. When he gets there he is enveloped in le resistance. It is parody abound in this anti-communist spoof. It doesn't quite measure up to Airplane! or Naked Gun, but it's entertaining enough.

Jim Abrahams and David Zucker, the creators of Airplane!, bring more madcap humour to the big screen with Top Secret!, which stars Val Kilmer as rock and roll singer Nick Rivers, who becomes involved in a resistance plot to rescue a scientist being held captive in East Germany.

Kilmer, in his debut, is surprisingly good, handling acting, comedy and singing duties with aplomb, proving without a doubt that he is a major star in the making; Kilmer is joined by a wonderful supporting cast which includes more established faces such as Peter Cushing, Omar Sharif, Ian McNiece and Michael Gough.

Unfortunately, as talented as the cast are, the scattershot humour is far too random and wildly inconsistent to be a total success: for every laugh-out-loud moment (my favourites: a very silly dance routine, the novelty dog poop gag, the brilliantly executed Swedish book store scene, and the singing horse), there are dozens of others that will fail to tickle the funny bone.