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Page 14 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, July 10, 1984
'Top Secret' should go undercover
By Byron L. Bull
W HEN AIRPLANE opened three
summers ago, there was no
mistaking it for anything but pure, free
spirited going for broke nonsense.
There was something appealing about
its cheap, crudely-put-together struc-
ture, with its merciless shower of visual
gags and puns. Unsophisticated, but
refreshingly so, like a fine old MAD
magazine parody. Top Secret, the
follow up project by that films
writing/directing team of David
Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry
Zucker, is nothing but a disappointing
retread.
Just as Airplane spoofed the disaster
genre, Top Secret tackles both World
War Two adventures (The Guns of
Navarone, Great Escape) and all of
those awful Elvis Presley musicals. It
does so by dropping an American fifties
styled rock singer named Nick Rivers
(Val Kilmer) into an East German con-
spiracy to destroy the NATO fleet with
a secret weapon. The film's big joke is
that though this is set in the present, the
country is still being run by the Nazi's
who are as ruthless as ever.
Where there are Nazi's, there must
he a Frensh resistance, even if this isn't
France and there's no war. Nick falls
into their ranks (whose memhers have
names like Deja Vu and Escargot, that
sound appropriate enough in thick
French accents) and in love with a
beautiful young Hillary (Lucy Gut-
teridge). From there the story follows
the cast through the stock ingredients,
with a style that's meant to be absurb
but more frequently is sophomoric
silliness.
The Abrahams/Zucker/Zucker style
is to bombard the audience with one
gag after another so relentlessly that
one forgives the actual absence of any
wit. The results is a lot like a Mel
Brook's movie mercifully free of Mel
Brooks and his schtick. The trick
worked on Airplane because there were
enough good one liners to stretch laughs
through the lapses. Here, the giggles
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Ian McNeice and Omar Sharif are two members of the French underground resistance in Top Secret, the disappointing
new movie from the creator's of Airplane.
are further apart, and not funny enough damage, killing the momentum it so really going on. The cameo appearan-
to stretch through the dull parts. This is badly needs. ces, unlike those wonderful performan-
Airplane at one third speed. To add a bit a ribaldry, there are a ces by Robert Stack and Leslie Nielson
Some of the jokes work. The song and number of teen minded bits of cheap who mocked their own typecasting in
dance parodies are ingenius, and shots. These range from a cow perfor- Airplane, are all wrong in tone. Omar
Kilmer's impersonations of Presley's ming felatio through a jack hammer Sharif and Peter Cushing are on screen
body gyrations are hilarious. An un- sieved and vibrator, to a giant park only as slapstick fodder, and look un-
derwater fistfight, and a stunt involving statue of a pigeon that is despoiled by a comfortable about it.
a volatile Pinto, are also gems, but flock of extras. Maybe, under a sole guiding hand,
they're too infrequent. Too much of the The cast lacks any charisma, which the film might have found the right
attempted humor is based on bad ver- doesn't help things any. Val Kilmer has angle. But with four writers and three
bal and visual puns, that get so predic- nothing to offer other than his Presley body directors tugging at this film, it ends up
table you can spot them as they're gestures. He shows no sense of timing, a listless committee decision. Top
being set up. The plugged in joke style and lacks the self conscious good humor Secret is a project compromised and
of comedy does this film the most that indicates he's aware of what's calculated to death.
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'Greenwich isn't papal
(Continued-from Pagel1)
allows Roberts to go crazy with overac-
ting. In his most emotional scene, in
which he gets his thumb cut off by mob-
sters, Roberts delives a two-minute
sequence of eye-rolling and anguished
grimaces, the likes of which have never
been seen on a screen. Here, as in many
other instances, Rosenberg should have
exercised a little control over the actor.
The actors are faced with the major
problem that the characters are written
devoid of any redeeming qualities -
invarying degrees, they are just a
couple of greasy, stupid jerks.
It is impossible to believe that
Charlie, who supposedly is the smarter
of the two, would agree to rob a safe
with Paulie. Roberts' Paulie is un-
speakably stupid. He is not a little dizzy
or slow-witted, but a larcenous, self-
pitying imbecile, just this side of brain.
damage.
Thus the crucial element of the plot is
a heist which could never logically oc-
cur, staged by two friends who could
never reasonably be expected to be
friends.
Vincent Patrick's script keeps
shooting itself in the foot, keeping the
film stuck in mediocrity. Charlie is
given one opportunity to establish him-
self as a human being in a scene on a
rooftop with his young son. The scene
could have been developed into
something touching, giving the charac-
ter a certain complexity. Instead,
Patrick brings Paulie barging into it,
demolishing it spectacularly.
The film's next-to-last scene, in which
Charlie confronts Bedbug Eddie, the
mobster whom he has ripped off, is
similarly bungled. Charlie tells Eddie
that he hasa tape which could send him
to prison for years. He wants to strike a
bargain. The tension is built expertly by
Rosenberg. Eddie will either accept
Charlie's terms or hack him to pieces.
Paulie brings Eddie a cup of coffee
laced with lye. The scene is demolished,
the film's denouement destroyed, for
no reason.
A lot of buzzwords are being thrown
around regarding the theme of The
Pope Of Greenwich Village - "male
bonding" and "tribal loyalties," for
example. Ultimately, however, the film
seems to be saying that "ethnicity is
destiny."
Charlie dreams of opening a country
inn, but he might as well be dreaming of
opening a boutique on Mars. Charlie fits
into Paulie's observation on racehorses
- he can't make himself better than he
was born. He is stuck in Little Italy,
doomed to being what Italians in this
film are; borderline criminals with
vulgar wardrobes and mean
dispositions.
This theme is arrived at by a process
of subtraction, after the film's comic
possibilities have been killed off by the
deficiencies of the script, or by Rosen-
berg's direction.
The lack of comic relief, and of any
serious content makes The Pope Of
Greenwich Village a very somber af-
fair. After almost two hours of wat-
ching the protagonists bungle around
like rats in a maze, one leaves the film
feeling emotionally drained, and
having learned nothing.
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