Loved this as a kid and it still holds up well with about ten times the genuine laughs as modern day spoofs - I must sound so old saying something like that but if you don't believe me check it out. It's bewildering to think this wasn't a hit - apparently it did okay but was a disappointment considering the budget and expectations.
I think maybe they spoofed a genre too far. There is a good basic premise here - rock star gets involved in the Cold War busting a scientist out of prison - with a strong basic dramatic arc (cocky kid grows up and finds love) but the film constantly veers between World War Two and the Cold War. I think it needed to pick one - probably the Cold War, and just set it in the sixties. That would have meant losing all the French resistance and Nazi stuff but it could be done. As it is, I think it was too much of a mixture.
Anyway, that's hindsight. To praise the good thinks: there's the song 'Skeet Surfing', so many classic lines ("truck load of dead rats in a tampon factory", "I just can't bring my wife to orgasm"), the names of the resistance (Montage, Mise-en-scene, Deja Vu, Latrine), the slapstick battles, the villain who only knows what he reads in the New York Post, the Blue Lagoon flashbacks.
This was a great way for Val Kilmer to start off his career, and Lucy Gutteridge does a great Ingrid Bergman impression. Some fun cameos by Peter Cushing and Omar Sharif - I wish there'd been more of them a la Flying High. But it's wonderful.
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