Jay: So Marshall, what did you think of Top Secret? Eminem: You know a lotta people think you can't rhyme nothing with orange. It's real easy though you just gotta think outside the box. Jay: *stares off in distance*
At 16:24, note how Val Kilmer lurches as the "train" moves in order to make it more believable. So much attention to detail to sell the dumbest jokes. This movie is genius.
I wanna say its just building gags out of real setups and conventions like its some easy thing, but that was as much a craft as actually doing the real deal.
This film has some of my favourite lines of any film. A man on a phone says "I see. Let me know if there's any change in his condition." Hangs up the phone. "He's dead."
My favorite bit in Top Secret is when they're planning their break in, and they start with sketching in dirt with a stick, then bring out one little prop cow, and by the end of it, have an entire, highly detailed mock up of the complex and the surrounding area, complete with running train.
Yeah i love how every joke subtly builds up. You're just watching them explain the plan. And before you know you're seeing a miniature castle with a gate. It's so great.
The underwater fight scene is a good example of why ZAZ movies were amazing. After deciding what the gag was going to be, they implement it 100% seriously with proper filmmaking effort. That underwear fight used excellent practical effects. They had weighted shoes and really were in a tank underwater, holding their breath during the takes.
6:34 In a movie with a plot, the fate of the resistance-leader would have been more clear. Do the cowboys put him in jail? What for, brawling? Do they summon witnesses to his greater crimes? Does he drown? You'ld think so but Hillary already thought he'd drowned when he never came back to the island. He has a history of getting rescued by political factions.
Yeah it’s a ridiculous fight scene, but the way he just easily drowns Nigel, is intentionally anticlimactic like it’s not meant to be a big fight it’s just two guys fighting, but the ending of it is bizarre the strange goodbye line even though she could have probably said it normally since she’s a mermaid.
I never see those sorts of name pun gags in comedies anymore, maybe it’s just a Zucker specific thing. “Surely you can’t be serious!” “I’m serious. And don’t call me Shirley.” It’s like the peak form of dad jokes
I LOVE how Jay took the time to mention that the Zuckers are from Milwaukee and said that led to their style of humor. I always lump Red Letter Media, the Zucker Brothers, and MST3K in a group of "midwestern humor" which I personally adore. :)
The Montgomery Ward Mailing List was: If you were on it, you would get this huge cumbersome catalog more frequently than you would like. It was like a phone book. You had to carry it from the mailbox and then you had to get rid of it somehow because another one was on the way.
I didn't get it specifically because i'm not American. But I recall immediately imagining it as any number of mailing lists where one keeps getting essentially harrased by excessive mailer after mailer.
My favorite sight gag of all time; as they're escaping the ballet, they open a janitor's closet, and the janitor is just standing in there. It's a blink and you'll miss it moment, but it floors me every time.
And my favorite sight gag of all time is literally two seconds after that when they escape into the "Prop Room" and it's filled top to bottom with airplane propellers.
@@TonyBlue87 that's a joke that will escape anyone who is not a native english speaker. I never notice that one. Never knew the name was prop room and I would never make the connection to "propellers" (prop room meaning property, I guess?)
@@rogeriopenna9014 i don't know where the term originates, but props are just the objects in the movie. like lamps and tables or fake swords. but its a LITERAL prop room, as in propellers
@@TonyBlue87 and they brace the door with the huge propeller, hanging from a pair of chandelleirs on each side of the door. When the soldiers finally burst through, it's the propeller that broke in two. The chandelliers haven't moved a millimeter.
(Mike voice) "oooor, since his Name is Robert Picard, he might be a cross between Robert Picardo and Jean-Luc Picard, much like Tuvix was in that one Episode of Star Trek when Tuvok and Neelix..." (goes into full detail for about 5 minutes)
"For as long as a single man is forced to cower under the iron fist of oppression, as long as a child cries out in the night, or an actor can be elected president, we must continue the struggle"
The first time my brother and I saw this movie was on TV. We stumbled upon the opening train chase and we settled in for a Great Escape esque war movie. Then the soldier hit the bricks and what we got was two hours of uncontrollable laughter. It was so unexpected that every joke hit us hard enough to literally have us rolling on the floor laughing. It is truthfully the hardest I've ever laughed in my life.
it's amazing how wrong expectations can have extremely positve effect on a movie watching experiance ... for example one of my favourite movies of all time is Gravity (2013), all i knew about the movie is that sandra bullock and george clooney starr in it, i didn't watch trailer or read synposs, based on a movie poster i thought it was gonna be a romantic comedy in space, when the music and action kicked in it hit me like a freight train, i was absolutely awestruck with the film... if i had seen the trailer, my impressions would probably be exact opposite...
@@Stephen7764. This happened to my parents while vacationing without us kids. They walked into Raiders of the Lost Ark because they recognized Harrison Ford from American Graffiti. Needless to say what they got was anything but American Graffiti. They said they felt like they discovered Disneyland in a strip mall
Ja ja ja Soy de Argentina, de chica lo ví y no entendía lo que era una parodia y los chiste. Ahora de grande la volví a ver y morí de risa desde el comienzo. Es una lástima que al buscarlo en las diferentes plataformas de peliculas en castellano y/o español latino, algunos de los chistes se deformen un poco pero la magia y la diversión están ahí. Me encanta Val kilmer. Lo redescubrí este año gracias a Internet y pude ver la mayoría de sus trabajos. Me encanta .
Jay's observation on the rigid plot structure really hits on something -- the gags work in part bc your brain keeps thinking it's watching a regular movie, so there is an element of surprise. Sort of why the Onion was so terrific in its heyday -- it looked and felt like a generic USA Today-style newspaper. If the layout was sloppy or they used "funny" fonts the premise falls apart.
I know many people in Slovenia probably got offended by it, but EUROTRIP is another awesome comedy. And the Slovenia part is so damn funny (obviously completely nonsensic, exchange rates don´t even work like that just to start. And yeah, they filmed the Slovenia outside shot on a gypsy ghetto it seems) "a nickel!!!" turns around and faces hotel boss "You see this?? I QUIT" slaps boss in the face "I will buy my own hotel!"
I’m surprised that Val Kilmer didn’t do more comedy work in his career, as “Top Secret” and “Real Genius” are fantastic films that still hold up well over 30 years later.
I think you guys get exactly why I love the underwater fight scene. It's just so ridiculous, it's so dumb, it keeps building on with extra features like the bartender and the card-players, and it clearly took _way too much talent and effort_ to film, that it pretty much automatically becomes funny. It was the very definition of "crazy awesome".
When you're comparing the Zuckers to other comedy movies of the time, I think you've got to mention Mel Brooks, and then you also have to go back to Monty Python, and the biggest difference stylistically is that in other style parodies the situation is more likely to be played straight, with the characters acting silly, whereas in the Zucker movies the situation is played silly, while the characters play it straight. And that this meshes with the idea of "Midwestern" style comedy, because Midwestern style comedy is largely about people who try to keep up appearances and control themselves even when their scenario is absurd (like Harold Ramis in his different genres, but similar style - or, you know, "Scientist Man.").
Near the there's a marquee advertising a Nick Rivers concert for a few seconds. At the bottom of the sign it says "And time permitting, Frank Sinatra."
I saw an interview with Leslie Nielson on the tubes recently and I think he hit the nail on the head regarding the comedic style. He described it as 'not mean spirited', where everyone in the scene is kind of the butt of the joke.
They exist in a reality where funny things are constantly happening and nobody is in on the joke. They don't introduce Latrine and have someone snicker, it's simply accepted that his name is Latrine. When Peter Cushing takes the glass away from his face and just has a big eye Val Kilmer doesn't recoil. Only we get to notice the absurdity.
@@jukeboxfandango Yeah. The fact everyone plays it straight makes it funnier, _and_ they wouldn't be able to get in as many gags if everybody reacted to everything.
I love that Peter Cushing's giant eye is an obscure but fun reference to a publicity still from "The Curse of Frankenstein" where Cushing has the magnifying glass to his eye and makes it look enlarged. I only watched this once in the early 2000s when a group of friends had a movie night. I'll have to rewatch it very soon. Thank you for spotlighting it, guys! :)
“Its a machine capable of separating the salt from 5000 gallons of seawater. Do you realise what that means?” “Wow, there would be enough salt to last forever,”
I think ultimately he plans to embed himself in a big block of melted movie merch tat, like what happened to that guy Harrison Silo in that 70s sci-fi movie
First off, Top Secret is one of my favorite comedies of all time forget hidden gem. Secondly, the Nick Rivers getting tortured and having that high school exam nightmare scenario and having him awaken to still being tortured and his level of relief is maybe one of my favorite scenes for comedy ever written. We've all had that nightmare before. I'm disabled and worked for many decades but i still wake up some days with the "late for work" anxiety that i've made it to getting in the shower before realizing i don't have to work today.
I feel that in order to make a good spoof movie, a film-maker has to understand, respect and even love the genre they're spoofing. Take _Young Frankenstein_ for example. Mel Brooks fought the studio on that over making it in black and white, even losing his shit when he found out that they wanted to colourise it in post (so I heard).
@@KOTYAR1 Absotively. Some of the later Brooks-movies were not so great and closer to the spoof movie style(men in tights for example), but Young Fronkensteen is a good movie that just so happens to be extremely funny.
Interesting. I didn’t know about the Ford Pinto thing, but I always loved that joke. I took it as a joke based on the fact that everything makes American cars always blow up in these action movies.
Ford Pinto had a gas tank that was literally next to the rear bumper. Many Pintos have "blown up" when rear ended. Crappy cheap car that everyone had. Jeez I'm old. Hahahaha!!
As the result of a lawsuit an internal Ford memo was discovered from the development of the Pinto, where Ford compared the cost of changing the fuel system to the cost of personal injury lawsuits for people horribly burned or killed during crashes. They calculated that the cost of the lawsuits was lower so they didn't bother changing it.
Same. I'm Spanish, saw this as a kid, that gag works perfectly because every other action movie out there has cars exploding each time they crash each other. I had never heard of what a Ford Pinto was at the time, I laughed all the same.
I always referred to these sort of films as _"laugh-a-minute"_ comedies. And while Abrahams and the Zuckers are largely responsible for the golden age of this style of comedy, please don't forget their collaborator and writing genius, Pat Proft. He's largely uncredited in these films. His film "Real Genius" is a great example of his writing talent.
I feel like if you want to make a comedy today, and you're not just making straight to redbox trash, you have to add a prefix to it. Action-comedy. Sci-fi-comedy. Romance-comedy. There are plenty of movies that are funny, but very few whose only goal is to be funny. They still need that third act moment where you have to be sad and realize, no, this is also a serious story where we have AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO TELL. Hell, even Deadpool 2 was actually ABOUT something (which, I mean, I'm not going to say this is a bad thing. It can work. But Rare is the movie where you're not expected to take anything serious at all).
@@BakaHoushi Movie 43 seemed to be an attempt at that kind of comedy but in an anthology format, and I'm one of the six people on Earth who doesn't hate it. But I still think only about a 3rd of it is really funny.
Who do you think could be the next Leslie Nielsen? My pick would be Hugo Weaving. After the dramatic Agent Smiths, Elronds, and V (for Vendetta) characters, seeing him do straight-man comedy would be delightful.
@@NoActuallyGo-KCUF-Yourself It's not in movies, but I think Andre Braugher's in prime position to be the next Leslie Nielsen. He spends Brooklyn Nine-Nine playing an AMAZING straight man in a role that's essentially a parody of the things that made him famous.
only ZAZ knew how to use Leslie Nielsen. Top Secret is one of the best comedies of all time, and one of the most underrated movies ever. the mood is right and the gags ambitious and actually funny. This is the review it deserves.
While I generally agree, there are a few exceptions: "Wrongfully Accused" isn't as good as say Airplane or Naked Gun... but probably about on par with the Naked Gun sequels. Enough solid gags to make it a worthy viewing... and it's directed / written by Pat Proft who was a writer from the Naked Gun show/movies. "Dracula Dead and Loving It" is a lesser Mel Brooks movie, but both Nielsen and Peter MacNicol (Janoosh? from Ghostbusters 2) are both pretty funny in it.
The scene where the soldier falls and shatters into pieces scared the shit out of me as a kid. That fear was compounded further by the uproarious laughter of my parents. Who were these cruel monsters that were so callous as to find a horrific death this funny? Would they laugh just as hard if it had happened to me, their only son? It wasn’t until I saw ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers(1978)’ and ‘The Stuff’ shortly after that this passing thought morphed into full-blown paranoia, from which I’m still reeling to this day.
I absolutely still carry the 'trauma' of being too young to fully understand jokes. The Landshark on SNL terrified me. The woman at the door gets her head eaten and everyone is laughing! I absolutely remember these things, so I'm really understanding when a child, a niece or something, gets scared by watching something not intended to be scary.
I loved that explanation. You hit the nail on the head explaining that childhood fear - "Would they laugh just as hard if it had happened to me, their only son?" that's hilariously accurate.
I don´t remember exactly how, but I watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in the movie theater. I was born in 79 so I was surely a little kid when I did that. The scene where the priest rips the heart from the poor guy before throwing him at lava was a little more scary then any Top Secret movie.
Mike would probably come up with something like "well, the name of the german officer is Robert Picard, so we MIGHT have a situation like in that one episode of Star Trek, when a transporter malfunction formed a new character called Tuvix, who was created by the energy patterns of Tuvok and Neelix, soooo.... Robert Picard couldve been created by ROBERT Picardo and Jean-Luc Picard..."
The german officer (presumably the one in the Montgomery Ward joke) is Warren Clarke, who is also known to American audiences for playing Dim in _A Clockwork Orange_ and to Brits as a prolific television actor, including as one of the title characters in _Dalziel and Pascoe._
I’ve seen this movie hundreds of times but never saw Val Kilmer getting measured for a suit 😂 each time you watch this movie, there is a good chance you see something you’ve missed before
Hi, I (german, born early 80's, living in West-Berlin by the time the Wall came down) love this movie. Thank you for the re:view. The gags, the style, the actors - everything is so good. I knew this movie in the german translation since I was a child and I watched it english; both versions are eqaully good.
Same here: born in early 80s in West-Berlin, grew up with this movie (in German translateion) and still love it! Cheers to my unknown buddy from my home town
Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker are the masters of the spoof-comedy genre,along with Mel Brooks.Abrahams also directed the 2 excellent '' Hot Shot'' movies on his own. There's no comparison between these guys and the creators of the ''Date/Desaster-whatever Movies''.
I vaguely remember fire based recalls for the PT Cruiser during the 2000s, so the idea of a car being known for setting alight during crashes, transfers between generations to at least some degree. As others mentioned it works for other reasons too (spoof of how explodeable Hollywood cars are, and just a visual gag in its own right)
One of the weird surreal jokes the mention is great, we can see in the background a pigeon statue and flying humans landing on it. Subtle and absurd. Perfect.
This movie was forbidden fruit to me for over twenty years. It came out when I was 11, and I sooo wanted to see it after watching the previews, but my mom refused to take me to it: it was too silly, not highbrow enough, and I think the scene of the girl with her boobs in the sand deeply offended mom's feminist sensibilities. I finally got to see it at age 32 when I met a friend who had the DVD. I was so excited when he suggested watching it, and it was worth the wait!
Gotdamn, 1984 was a crowded year for iconic and notable movies! Top Secret Repo Man This Is Spinal Tap Police Academy Romancing The Stone Firestarter Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Star Trek III: The Search For Spock Ghostbusters Gremlins (two of the best in their franchise vvv) A Nightmare On Elm Street Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter The Karate Kid The Last Starfighter The Muppets Take Manhatten The NeverEnding Story Revenge Of The Nerds Red Dawn C.H.U.D. The Terminator Missing In Action Beverly Hills Cop Dune 1984 Starman ...to name a few. All but eight of those went on to have at least one sequel.
Man I watched Top Secret for the first time today and I say that it has to be one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen! I haven’t laughed throughout a movie in the longest time! Highly underrated movie.
I think this is my favorite of all the re:Views. I've seen Top Secret like a dozen times and there's still so much they bring up that I hadn't thought about.
The serious orchestral music in these films for me is a huge part of why I laugh. Every now and then I watch the dog biscuit joke and I laugh out loud every single time. My fave gag ever I think.
Weird Al song aren't only style parody, they're style perfectionism, since Devo themselves said Al did Devo better than they ever could with Dare To Be Stupid.
@Tomas Knyvett Kurt mother-loving Cobain himself loved Weird Al's parodies and said that he knew that Nirvana had "made it" when "Smells like Nirvana" came out. Come on.
@Tomas Knyvett That's an absolute lie. His pancreas song is original music and it sounds EXACTLY like a Brian Wilson song. Weird Al is so much more than the silly parody guy. He's actually a very talented musician.
When I was 15 my parents got this movie from a dollar store and my dad told me he remembered it being pretty funny. I had a lot of movies from the dollar store they had bought me that were absolutely awful so I didn't think much of it, then I finally watched it. I laughed so hard I got a nosebleed and me and my brother sat down and watched the entire thing. I can't believe this movie is actually known, I thought it was some weird budget movie no one else knew about.
To this day when playing battlefield with my brother randomly firing into a mixed room of allies and enemies and only killing the enemies is known as a "chocolate moose" Love this movie
i was living in a house with a lot of roommates and we had a movie night one night and I suggested Airplane. they switched it off after 15 minutes and it broke my heart
You did it. I dont know how you did it, but you did it. You managed to approach this topic without mentioning the other cinematic powerhouse in this area, adjancent to ZAZ... Mel Brooks.
The best ZAZ comedy and best comedy in general. The amount of gags in this one is just incredible and hearing that this was Val Kilmer‘s first ever screen appearance is just mind boggling. His timing is just amazing.
“Don’t worry, Nick. Life is full of its little miseries. We must learn to deal with them in a mature and adult fashion.” (Sneezes into hands) Aaaahhhhhhhhh!!!!! (Jumps out the window)
Holy shit, I've never been more excited for a re:view notification than this one! I grew up on this movie and I'm glad you guys are giving it the recognition it deserves. Great job
no joke, the underwater fight scene is a stunning achievement in moviemaking, and the best thing about it that it's simply done for a bunch of silly gags. fantastic. love the whole movie.
The reason I heard Police Squad was cancelled after so few episodes was because the network felt the humor required the viewer to think too much. The jokes were going over people's heads because they were expecting the usual dumb TV humor and here was something where you had to pay attention to get a lot of the gags. Yes...Police Squad was too intelligent for television.
I think it was the executive in charge of programming that was quoted saying something to the effect of "the audience had to actually watch it to enjoy it" as the reason for its cancellation :/
Not necessarily "too smart." The feeling was that people didn't pay full attention to a TV show the way they did a movie. As Police Squad was very deadpan, it didn't "signal" jokes the way, say, a laugh track would - hence the infamous exec line that people actually had to watch the show to enjoy it.
Police Squad was absolutely hilarious. I never seen my mother laugh so hard at the dentist scene "I'm not an animal, i'm a human being". and the red stain mouth / pistachio shell pile. I thought for sure it was on for a full season. I guess I just watched each episode over and over. My favorite was the banana chunk stuck to the tall guys face.
The hardest I've ever seen my dad laugh was the red pistachio shell scene. I actually thought he was going to have a heart attack or something he was laughing so hard.
My favorite bit is when they start kissing at the swedish book shop and the camera moves to a fireplace, but then they roll in that shot and the camera has to move toanother fireplace.
My favorite is when they have that dramatic conversation while parachuting and it ends with them kissing and the camera pans to a fireplace parachuting behind them. Comedy gold.
Holy hell I haven't thought about Top Secret in forever. So glad you guys made a vid about it, such a fantastic movie! The cow costume gets meeeee every time.
@14:00 That was actually one of the things that I LOVED about Weird Al's UHF movie. I felt like it was a fantastic combination of the Nielsen dead-pan approach to comedy with the inherent absurdism that is Weird Al. The turtle scene, for example, will always make me laugh; "their nature's suction cup ;)"
Man don’t sleep on these Re:Views. This is the third movie these guys have helped me realize exists that I keep adding to my list! First a David Byrne movie and now a Zucker movie I didn’t know about!?
Yeah! Great pick for a Re-View guys. I think Top Secret might be the #1 most quoted movie from me and my friends all throughout junior high... "I Know A Little German, Skeet Surfin, Souvenirs Novelties Party tricks, Ripple Blanc, Shocholate Mousse, GRENAADE!" Lol Fave gags: the giant phone forced perspective,the Peter Cushing magnified eyeball and reverse shot/dialogue library scene. I think Real Genius and Top Secret are two of Val Kilmer's best stuff. Great job guys!
I’m glad Jay mentioned Weird Al, style parodies we’re my favorite songs of his. Top Secret is style parodies within great writing. The jokes are layered absurd on the surface, funny if you know the reference, and genius when you put it all together.
As a teen aged Englishman I didn't get the Ford Pinto joke in 1984 apart from exactly as Jay & Colin said, small impact big explosion. My older car fanatic brother explained it to me. I also had no idea that Top Secret was relatively unknown until I saw this video, I just assumed it was as revered by all as it is by me. I can hardly describe the pleasure this movie gave me, it's something to do with my love of close-up magic, special effects and optical illusions. Suddenly here was a film that was like the most delicious chocolate fudge cheesecake of those things and the topping was that it was dang hilarious. In every way it was total brain-pleasure porn.
