Top Gun - Dir. Tony Scott 1986

Okay, I was actually going to write about “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” today, since I watched it yesterday, but I feel that addressing “Top Gun” is a far more pressing matter. There’s a reason why I hadn’t watched this movie in a good 15 or 20 years. When I popped it into my DVD player last month, I wasn’t expecting much–and not much is indeed what I got. I have no idea how this movie got so popular, and no one has ever been able to give me a good reason why it is (”It’s just cool” is not a reason, it’s an excuse).

The Plot: Everyone’s seen this, so I’m not going to waste my time going too deep here. Tom Cruise’s character Maverick and a bunch of other people with funny names fly airplanes and act tough. Every once in a while, someone “buzzes the tower” and makes one of his superiors angry. Somebody dies, somebody falls in love, and a few people gain respect for each other–even though you never thought they could.

What Makes it Watchable: I have no idea. I know people who have watched this movie a million times, and I just don’t get it. The film’s been out for 22 years, and for a good portion of them grown men considered it the height of cool to slap hands and declare that they had the “need for speed” or call each other “Goose”, “Iceman”, or whatever. I bare a particular grudge against this movie because I had to watch it so many friggin times when I was a kid. Though there were plenty of truly awesome movies that came out in the mid 80’s, it was like a huge portion of America had only ever heard of this one. Go figure.

Another thing that I don’t get about fans of this film is that so few will admit that it’s a little gay. How people who absolutely refused to watch “Brokeback Mountain” because it was “gay” can sit and watch that beach volleyball scene in “Top Gun” and declare it “cool” is beyond me. “Top Gun” fans talk about the movie like it’s a classic; somehow this contrived, predictable, and at times boring movie has become something that everyone should watch (while with anything containing subtitles or actors you’ve never heard of is easily dismissed).

This movie hasn’t gotten any better since the first time I saw it, but it hasn’t gotten any worse, either. “Top Gun” continues to be a mediocre film (though when viewed as a commercial for joining the Navy, it is nothing less than spectacular) with a crappier than average plot and lots of airplanes. It’s not that this film is THAT bad, cause frankly I’ve seen worse–it’s that people claim it’s SO GOOD. I’ve had to sit through some terrible stuff, but few films other than ”Top Gun” have inspired so many people to insist that I watch it again and give it “another try”.

Averted eyes: none

Breaks needed to complete viewing: none 

Overall rating from one to ten: 4 

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