My not-so-secret love of Top Secret

Regular Applause readers may know of my immense fondness for — some might say obsession with — the 1984 spoof Top Secret!

Not only does it star a young Val Kilmer at his absolute dreamiest — He sings! He dances! He fights in an underwater saloon! — it’s a foolproof means of finding “your people.”

When you meet someone who knows how to properly respond to the sentence “I know a little German” (“He’s sitting over there”), you know you have a friend for life.

So it was with great sadness that I read Tuesday of Top Secret! director/writer Jim Abrahams’ death from leukemia at age 80.

Along with the Zucker brothers Jerry and David (ZAZ), Abrahams was the architect of some of the silliest, most sneakily brilliant comedies of the ‘80s, including Airplane!, Hot Shots and the Naked Gun series. He leaves behind a legacy of endlessly quoted lines —“Surely you can’t be serious.” “I am, and don’t call me Shirley” among them.

Top Secret! was a box-office bomb, and although I think it’s gained a new audience over the years, it’s far overshadowed by the ZAZ collective’s other work in conversations about the best movie spoofs.

Explaining its failure, one critic/fan singled out “the lack of any clear sense of period, something that may throw viewers who insist on comedic non-essentials like interior logic.”

In fact, I would argue that unwillingness to be beholden to the constraints of genre is exactly what makes Top Secret! so deliriously funny. The cinematic tropes it’s mocking — mostly Second World War films about the French resistance and Elvis movies, although Blue Lagoon is inexplicably thrown in there too — are the barest of framework upon which the filmmakers hang a gaudy, spangled dinner jacket of jokes, an anarchic collection of sight gags, puns and pure silliness so unrelenting that the totally dumb stuff doesn’t even register, because the next shiny bauble has already distracted you.

It’s also full of Easter eggs (or perhaps, considering the context, Passover eggs). In one scene, a snide waiter says something in German that the subtitles portray as “Can I take your order?” He’s actually saying “Gay kaken ofn yahm” — a Yiddish phrase meaning “Go shit in the ocean.”

“The lesson we took from Airplane! was just fill up 90 minutes with jokes, and you have a movie,” David Zucker said. “With Top Secret!, it’s very funny, but it really isn’t a good movie. It really didn’t have a plot or real characters or real structure.”

I say, who needs plot or characters when you have a cow in rubber boots?

Jill Wilson

If you enjoy my newsletter, please consider forwarding it to others. They can sign up for free here.

Did you know we have many other free newsletters? You can gorge yourself on food and beverage news from my Arts & Life pals Eva Wasney and Ben Sigurdson, who write the bi-weekly Dish newsletter, or you can follow a weekly exploration of Indigenous voices, perspectives and experiences in Niigaan Sinclair’s Biidaajimowin | News from the Centre.

You can browse all of our newsletters here.

What’s up this week

• Free Press arts team picks for this week.

• Winnipeg’s Contemporary Dancers present a 60th Anniversary Tribute to Rachel Browne until Sunday at her namesake theatre at 211 Bannatyne Ave. Tickets at eventbrite.ca; read about it here.

• It’s Christmas light season once again: Canad Inns Winter Wonderland opens today and runs to Jan. 4 at Red River Exhibition Park. Tickets and more into at tobatickets.ca. Over at Assiniboine Park, Zoo Lights runs to Jan. 5 (closed Dec. 2, 3, 9, 10, 16, 17, 24, 25). Tickets and more info at assiniboinepark.ca.

• Tonight at Club Regent Event Centre it’s Hotel California: The Original Eagles Tribute at 7 p.m. Tickets and more info at ticketmaster.ca.

• Canadian comedian Russell Peters, a global superstar and the first standup act to popularize Netflix specials, plays Canada Life Centre on Saturday. Tickets at ticketmaster.ca.

• Get a Handel on the holiday season with Singalong Messiah, Nov. 30 at 7 p.m., 2nd floor concert hall, Westminster United Church. Free admission, but donations are accepted. Call 204-784-1330 to register.

• Winnipeg Chamber Music Society features Gwen Hoebig (violin), Karl Stobbe (viola), Yuri Hooker (cello), David Moroz (piano), performing works by Pärt, Beethoven, Bach on Sunday at, 7:30 p.m., Desautels Concert Hall, U of M. Tickets and more info at wcms.mb.ca.

• Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s holiday show, Little Women, runs to Dec. 14 at the John Hirsch Mainstage. Tickets at royalmtc.ca.

From left: Bailey Chin, Ava Darrach-Gagnon, Julia Davis and Megan Fry perform as the March sisters in RMTC’s production of Little Women. (Leif Norman photo)

NEW IN MUSIC

Eva Wasney:

Cree vocalist heading to Grammys after stop at Carnegie Hall

Earlier this month, mezzo-soprano Rhonda Head from Opaskwayak Cree Nation found out an album she contributed to had been nominated for a Grammy Award. Read More

Album reviews: Kendrick Lamar, Gwen Stefani, Joe Fonda Quartet, RIAS Kammerchor Berlin

Hip hop Kendrick Lamar GNX (PGLang) A summer-long beef between two of hip hop’s most popular and successful MCs, Kendrick Lamar and Drake, has been the talk of the rap universe. The back-and-forth kic... Read More

David Sanderson:

Air time

Principal flutist Jan Kocman celebrates a half-century with Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra Read More

Bridget Brown, The Associated Press:

It’s almost time for Spotify Wrapped. When can you expect your 2024 recap?

NEW YORK (AP) — It’s almost that time of year: Spotify is gearing up to release its annual Wrapped, personalized recaps of users’ listening habits and year in audio. Spotify has been giving its... Read More

NEW ON STAGE

Ben Waldman:

Rainbow Stage announces Rock of Ages, Frozen for 2025 season

Rainbow Stage’s 2025 season will feature an award-winning tribute to arena rock, an adaptation of an icy animated classic, a revival of a made-in-Manitoba vampire musical, and the early phases of development for a localized version of A Christmas Carol, set in “Dickensian Manitoba.” Read More

Holly Harris:

Long-suffering sisters

Louisa May Alcott adaptation lacks mastery, misses magic of iconic novels Read More

NEW ON SCREEN

Local goose documentary in running for global award

A locally shot nature documentary about the plight of urban geese has been nominated for an international film award. Read More

Ben Waldman:

Adam Hurtig wins two performance ACTRAs

Though he was out of town for the gala, Winnipeg actor Adam Hurtig had a solid night at Saturday night’s ACTRA Manitoba Awards, taking home wins for his on-screen work in a pair of performance categor... Read More