This was another Kilmer movie that I hadn't really heard of prior to the launch of TKP. I've learned from some friends, however, that this movie is regarded in the pantheon of classic 80s teen comedies. It's easy to see why. This movie has at least one training montage with an 80s ballad playing over it.
The premise is that a bright but helplessly nerdy 15 year old overachieves his way into a prestigious college's science department on a scholarship. He's tasked with working on a high power laser project that has hit a couple roadblocks in its development. He is intensely committed and quickly bests his older syncophantic co-researchers.
His roommate (Val Kilmer) is a wild, loose cannon, party animal type who refuses to live up to his obvious potential. It's a character that was reprised in the 90s by Jeremy Piven in "PCU" and in 2002's "Van Wilder" by Ryan Reynolds. Kilmer, being the broseph that he is, reaches out to his incredibly nerdy new lab partner/dormmate and teaches him all the joys irresponsibility: flirting with girls, turning a lecture hall into a swimming pool, using science to turn your dorm hallway into a sheet of ice, etc. It's essentially the same character he played in Top Secret but a little more excitable and the ability to science exclusively for the purposes of recreation.
We learn early on that their professor is schilling his lab work for a defense contractor who is going to turn his laser into a killing machine that blasts people from space. An expensive and bizaare 1980s boondangle made commonplace by another actor. Kilmer's incessant partying leads to his almost-expulsion from college when the laser weapon isn't ready in time. This leads to a training montage as Kilmer studies his ass off and finds a new way to make the laser work (because he's a 'real genius'?).
The final act of the movie is an insane plot twist in which the professor takes his death ray to the military to be tested (no peer review? what sort of clown college is that anyway?). Kilmer and his still hopelessly nerdy and awestruck roommate concoct a zany scheme, featuring a cameo by an early version of the internet, to stop the villainous military-industrialists. They sneak onto the military base and reroute the laser to blow up their teachers house [with popcorn(?!)] thus saving humanity from its warlike urges and ushering in an unending era of peace and prospertiy that continues unabated to this day.
For an 80s staple this movie has almost none of the classic songs of that era. I don't know how they got stuck with all the no-hit-wonders but I hadn't heard any of these songs before. Still, it followed a lot of 80s tropes and probably raised Kilmer's profile more than Top Secret.
Showing posts with label Comedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Comedy. Show all posts
February 10, 2009
February 9, 2009
Top Secret (1984)
When I first loaded up my Netflix queue with Val Kilmer movies in order to begin The Kilmer Project, I was hopeful. But by the time "Top Secret" arrived I was beginning to have second thoughts about the whole experiment. Here's a 1984 movie that I had never heard of and wasn't especially fondly remembered by critics. I wondered how much of this I would actually want to suffer through. Within five minutes of "Top Secret" I knew I had made the right choice.
This comedy tells the implausible story of a spy ring in East Germany that attempts to stop the Germans from gaining a weapon of mass destruction by rescuing a kidnapped scientist. Val Kilmer plays a US rock star whose big hit is called "Skeet Surfin'" which is the passtime of grabbing a twelve gauge shotgun and a surfboard and heading out onto the waves to shoot at clay pigeons launched from the beach. It's bizaare. The whole movie is in that campy sort of joke-a-minute slapstick political spoof that would later manifest itself in the Hot Shots movies of the 90s. The writers mine as many jokes as they can out of the idea of East Germany being a Stalinist police state. Ha! The cold war! Hilarious! Apparently almost all of the German dialouge is actually Yiddish which substitutes surprisingly well, though judging by the IMDB Trivia page it's kind of a lot inside jokes for the handful of the surving Yiddish speakers in the world. Otherwise it's a lot of kind of crude but PG-13 humor that you might expect in an 80s gagfest such as this.
As for Kilmer, apparently he is actually singing the goofy songs that his Elvis/Beach Boys character performs throughout the movie and he was even featured on the soundtrack performing under his character's name (Nick Rivers). His hair is immaculately feathered in the finest of 80s fashion (though I noted a continuity problem where he got an unexplained haircut about halfway through) and his Elvis-ish rock star role is played as a sort of earnest frat boy. Some of the songs in this movie are so weird that they're kind of worth hearing.
Ultimately the movie is the furthest thing from timeless. It's got jokes about the Ford Pinto and the Carter administration. Honestly, I'm not even sure if kids growing up today would even understand the whole East Germany/Soviet Bloc cold war stuff. Nonetheless, this was Kilmer's first big role and a great start to The Kilmer Project.
This comedy tells the implausible story of a spy ring in East Germany that attempts to stop the Germans from gaining a weapon of mass destruction by rescuing a kidnapped scientist. Val Kilmer plays a US rock star whose big hit is called "Skeet Surfin'" which is the passtime of grabbing a twelve gauge shotgun and a surfboard and heading out onto the waves to shoot at clay pigeons launched from the beach. It's bizaare. The whole movie is in that campy sort of joke-a-minute slapstick political spoof that would later manifest itself in the Hot Shots movies of the 90s. The writers mine as many jokes as they can out of the idea of East Germany being a Stalinist police state. Ha! The cold war! Hilarious! Apparently almost all of the German dialouge is actually Yiddish which substitutes surprisingly well, though judging by the IMDB Trivia page it's kind of a lot inside jokes for the handful of the surving Yiddish speakers in the world. Otherwise it's a lot of kind of crude but PG-13 humor that you might expect in an 80s gagfest such as this.
As for Kilmer, apparently he is actually singing the goofy songs that his Elvis/Beach Boys character performs throughout the movie and he was even featured on the soundtrack performing under his character's name (Nick Rivers). His hair is immaculately feathered in the finest of 80s fashion (though I noted a continuity problem where he got an unexplained haircut about halfway through) and his Elvis-ish rock star role is played as a sort of earnest frat boy. Some of the songs in this movie are so weird that they're kind of worth hearing.
Ultimately the movie is the furthest thing from timeless. It's got jokes about the Ford Pinto and the Carter administration. Honestly, I'm not even sure if kids growing up today would even understand the whole East Germany/Soviet Bloc cold war stuff. Nonetheless, this was Kilmer's first big role and a great start to The Kilmer Project.
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