Spies Like Us (1985) Warner Bros./Comedy RT: 102 minutes Rated PG (language, crude humor, some sexual references, mild action violence) Director: John Landis Screenplay: Dan Aykroyd, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel Music: Elmer Bernstein Cinematography: Robert Paynter Release date: December 6, 1985 (US) Cast: Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Forrest, Donna Dixon, Bruce Davison, Bernie Casey, William Prince, Tom Hatten, Frank Oz, Charles McKeown, James Daughton, Jim Staahl, Heidi Sorenson, Vanessa Angel, Sergei Rusakov, Bjarne Thomsen, Garrick Dombrovski, Svetlana Plotnikova, Terry Gilliam, Costa-Gavras, Ray Harryhausen, Joel Coen, Sam Raimi, Martin Brest, BB King, Larry Cohen, Michael Apted, Bob Hope. Box office: $60.1M (US)/$77.3M (World)
Rating: ***
The John Landis comedy Spies Like Us hardly ranks alongside classics like Animal House, The Blues Brothers and Trading Places, but it’s pretty good if taken on its own goofy terms. I honestly didn’t care for it when I saw it in December ’85. I can’t imagine why it didn’t make me laugh that Friday afternoon. It was the first day of Christmas break and I was looking forward to two weeks of no school. I must have been in a jovial mood that day, yet I wasn’t amused by this comedic espionage caper starring the power duo of Chevy Chase (Caddyshack) and Dan Aykroyd (The Blues Brothers) as two bumbling secret agents on a fool’s mission in the Soviet Union. “Fools” is the operative term here.
I developed an appreciation for Spies Like Us thanks to multiple viewings on cable. I still don’t think it measures up to Landis’ other work, but it works well enough because it never tries to be more than it’s meant to be. It’s essentially an update of the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby “Road” pictures minus the musical numbers. This explains the cameo by the esteemed Mr. Hope in one of the movie’s funniest scenes. I’ll give Spies Like Us this; it works a hell of a lot better than the disastrous Ishtar. Unlike the notorious 1987 flop, it’s funny for the right reasons. Unlike the notorious 1987 flop, it’s actually funny.
Emmett Fitz-Hume (Chase), a pencil-pushing envoy at the State Department, wants to pass the Foreign Service Exam without making any real effort. He tries sleeping with his female boss to no avail. Pentagon codebreaker Austin Millbarge (Aykroyd) wants to pass the exam so he can finally get out of the basement he’s been stuck in for too long. His supervisor, determined to keep Austin right where he is, gives him only a day’s notice of the exam.
On the day of the exam, Emmett openly cheats in front of the test monitor (Oz, Trading Places) and gets an unwitting Austin involved in the ensuing mess. The DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), represented by corrupt agents Keyes (Prince, The Gauntlet) and Ruby (Davison, Willard), likes what they see. They need two expendable agents to act as decoys while another team carries out a mission of great importance. After some half-assed training, Emmett and Austin are dropped into Soviet Central Asia with orders to head for the border. Call it The Road to the USSR.
Their journey is fraught with misadventure and mishap like the pair of Russian spies trying to capture them. At one point, they pose as doctors at an Afghan guerrilla camp, a ruse that ends with them being chased and shot at by angry Afghans. Along the way, Emmett finds time to initiate a romance with an attractive doctor (Dixon, Doctor Detroit). Eventually, the guys meet the other team and help them complete the mission only to learn they’ve been duped into launching a nuclear missile at the US. Now it’s on them to save the world from complete annihilation.
Spies Like Us isn’t fall-down hilarious, but it has enough laughs to qualify as an entertaining comedy. Landis has a gift for assembling interesting casts and putting all his actors in all the right roles. Chase and Aykroyd make a good comedy team. What’s even better is that their characters appear to be written with them in mind. The screenplay by Aykroyd, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel allows the comic actors to play to their individual strengths. Chase and Aykroyd have terrific rapport and get off some good lines. One dialogue exchange involves the definition of the word “dickfer”. The rest of the cast, which includes Steve Forrest (Mommie Dearest) as a villainous general and Bernie Casey (I’m Gonna Git You Sucka) as the guys’ humorless trainer, does fine work as well.
In true Landis form, Spies Like Us features wall-to-wall cameos by assorted film directors like Terry Gilliam (Brazil), Costa-Gavras (Missing), Joel Coen (Blood Simple), Sam Raimi (the Evil Dead movies), Larry Cohen (Q), Michael Apted (Gorky Park) and Martin Brest (Beverly Hills Cop). Blues musician B.B. King shows up as a DIA agent. Special effects master Ray Harryhausen (Clash of the Titans) plays one of the real doctors at the camp. And then there’s Mr. Hope who looks like he still enjoys a good game of golf, even in the middle of a desert. Landis tries to make the most out of the material and succeeds for the most part. Truthfully, I don’t see the humor in a possible nuclear apocalypse, but that’s just me. I was the kid in school who always feared the Russians were going to blast us right off the map one day.
The bottom line is this: Spies Like Us is funny. Isn’t that the most important thing when it comes to comedy? Comedies without laughs are the most unwatchable of unwatchable movies. Sure, it’s a bit dated now in terms of its themes- i.e. the Cold War, the nuclear arms race. Perhaps it could serve as a lesson in late 20th century history for high schoolers? It might help illustrate the pervasive public paranoia concerning the Russians developing more sophisticated nuclear weapons and winning the arms race. LOL! Who would have ever thought that a John Landis comedy could become a de facto history lesson? Of course, I could be attaching too much significance to Spies Like Us. I doubt Landis intended to do anything more than amuse audiences. In any event, it’s a pretty good comedy. Not every joke lands, but enough do to make it worthwhile.
