This will surprise many of my friend I feel as this is not that well liked a movie. I could leap straight into the ‘others’ score with IMDb giving it a 6.5 out of 10 which is generous compared to Rotten Tomatoes and their humbling 32%. However, when released in 1985 this was a success at the box office with a $77.3m return from the box-office from a production budget of $22m. I went to the cinema with a friend and my mum back in 1985 to watch this movie and I remember my quote as we walked out. I said at the time is was really clever how they managed to cram all of the funny parts of the film into the trailer for it. The rest of the movie was just unfunny to me at the time. Over time I have appreciated other elements of the movie and the political and military humour that was dotted about also. This movie was appreciated by the bums on seats counter but critics on its release were never so pleased. Many at the time of the release were pouring cold water on the movie with one saying it had just the one laugh in the entire movie, see if you can spot it. Others like myself at the time thought it ran out of steam once the story got going. I would agree at the time as the trailer had many of the main characters training sequence in it and that was the funniest part of the movie and that took up the first third of the story. Whilst talking of the story shall we?
Two men are looking to take the test to become foreign service agents. Austin Millbarge a codebreaker at the pentagon who sits in the basement whilst colleagues takes credit for his work but yearns to be a secret agent. Emmett Fitz-Hume a smart ass, wise cracking (Fletch like Character) who is a pencil pusher, son of an envoy and is taking the test under peer pressure. The two meet in the examination room with Emmett cheating from the first second and Austin getting dragged into Emmett’s distraction techniques. They are caught and seeing as the Foreign Services are looking for two special agents as decoys for the main mission they are passed and taken off for special ops training. After flying through the training the two are sent off to Central Soviet Asia in a cargo box. Meanwhile the real agents are apparently secretly making their way to real objective of a nuclear missile. While our boys wait for their secret objective to be revealed to them when the need to know point is reached. When the two sets of agents meet during a disaster time for one of the teams will they join forces to complete both their missions or will the Russians take them prisoner and cut off their fingers until they talk.
This low scoring movie is still within my top 150 list and its now where I try and explain why. Firstly let me explain that this was directed by John Landis who’s movies will appear more than once on this list. Secondly the soundtrack and movie song was sung by Sir Paul McCarthy and at the time I loved it. It made up a record collection of about 5 records meaning it got played a lot of times. When compared to the others in the collection of the theme to Ghostbusters, Star Wars and Rat Rappin’ by Roland Rat this song got played a bit which like those sodding Meerkats they get inside your brain until you actually care for them. Well added to that here is the list of stars in the movie as well - Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Forrest, Donna Dixon, Bruce Davison, Bernie Casey, William Prince & Tom Hatten. There are also appearances from Bernie Casey, Charles McKeown, Vanessa Angel, Frank Oz, Terry Gilliam, Joel Coen, Sam Raimi, Bob Hope and B.B. King. I think the references and this faces made it work a bit more for me as I missed all the references before and when something gets past me I am impressed and really I shouldn’t as I am not that smart and many things gets past me anyway. I can see all the faults with this movie and I can forgive them to a certain extent because it’s a Landis movie and other classics means I give it a lesser strict look at it. This one I feel has slipped the net as I could list a lot more faults with this comedy that lacks laughs but I will look at the good things and see the subtle references and allow this let his mates join in the fun and with Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase playing a double act is going to be hard to manage as they both would want to dominate a movie. So allow me sweep the issues under the carpet to enjoy what is left. That and my eleven year old self suddenly had a thing for Donna and Vanessa after this movie, but we don’t like to talk about that.
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