[.ca] Spies Like Us (Full Screen) (ISBN 6305162042)

From Amazon.com:
Yet another bad movie in a lengthy string of losers for all three of the principals involved here: director John Landis and stars Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase. Chase and Aykroyd play a pair of bumbling would-be CIA agents who are spotted cheating on the entrance exam. So the CIA decides to use them as bait in a mission to flummox the Russians. Lots of pointless slapstick and mugging, but Landis hasn't made a genuinely funny film since Trading Places. Aykroyd and Chase seem smug and self-satisfied (don't they always?), as though they can rest forever on laurels earned during the 1975 season of Saturday Night Live. Look for a gaggle of film directors (Terry Gilliam, Joel Coen, Costa-Gavras) in cameo roles: that's the closest this film comes to cleverness. --Marshall Fine

The first step in the operation is to shave the patient:
Emmett Fitz-Hume (Dan Aykroyd) and (Chevy Chase) Austin Millbarge are looking for a new life and find it in the CIA. They are so good they are rushed through training. They are dropped off in the desert to perform a mission. Natural adapters they find their skills get them into and out of all situations Hope/Crosby style. Little do they know they are decoys? Speaking of Bob Hope, be sure to notice the key part he plays in this movie. Will they complete their mission? Or will they figure out who the decoys are? Where is the real team? Is there be something more sinister afoot? Can you sing "Soul Finger"?

Nice, fun movie, but... full screen?!?:
I've wanted to buy this title on DVD for a while, and finally I got to check if it was available... I found it, clicked "add to cart" in excitement... and then noticed the warning "Full screen format". Full screen? Yuk! What inane studio would release a theatrical film in any other format than the only acceptable one, widescreen? Thanks (not), but I will wait for a proper DVD.

Ain't nobody but spies like us!:
That's what the title song by Paul McCartney declares at the end of the credits. And despite the space satellites in the opening scene, the sign on one of them reading, "American Weather Station. Of No Military Value" hints at the comedic nature ahead. Spies Like Us is typical 80's comedy, entertaining, leaning mostly on lines by Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd's deadpan reaction. An 80's version of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope's Road pictures, as has been said of it, is indeed accurate. After Emmett Fitzhugh (Chevy Chase), a member of the diplomatic press corps cheats at a foreign service exam, unwittingly drawing in Austin Millbarge (Dan Aykroyd), a codebreaker and technical expert, they are recruited as GLG agents for a secret mission which leads them to Pakistan and eventually into Tadzhikistan, then part of the Soviet Union. What they don't know is that they are the decoys while some other GLG agents are the ones actually carrying out the operation. While the training sequences seem to be run-of-the-mill stuff, it's mostly the lines that get the laughs. However, the part where they are mistaken for doctors in Pakistan is one of the funnier scenes, particularly Fitzhugh's attempt to get the pretty blonde Dr. Boyer (Donna Dixon) to himself without marchlow present. As in Ghostbusters Dan Aykroyd plays the straight and smarter man, and is fortunate to be paired with one of the best funny men of the 80's, Chevy Chase. And okay, so Chase gets paired with the blonde in the movie, but did you see the girl Aykroyd ends up with? A big ROWR to Vanessa Angel! Chevy Chase has the great funny lines and a lot of the gags revolve around him. When a grenade is tossed at he and Aykroyd, he catches it and asks his partner, "What's this?" Aykroyd panics and says, "You don't want it!" Aykroyd later hears the Bar-Kays' song "Soul Finger" coming from the forest. After identifying the song, Chase says, "They really must be desperate for gigs." Roots of this comedy include SDI, the arms race, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and a general from the Jack D. Ripper academy of crazed warmongers, General Slime, played by Steve Forrest, who in one line says that naively wishing for peace leads to aggressive war. Maybe he should have heard Millbarge's quote on nuclear weapons: "Do you know what those things can do? Suck the paint off your house and give your family a permanent orange afro." And speaking of guest stars and cameos, I list Monty Python's Terry Gilliam, 1950's special effects designer Ray Harryhausen, 7,14,21,28, and 35UP director Michael Apted, political thriller director Costa Gavras as a Tadzhiki guard, and Bob Hope, who has a funny line at Fitzhugh and Millbarge's expense. Director John Landis's stamp is on here, e.g. Animal House, Trading Places, and after this movie, The Three Amigos and Coming To America. While I like this movie, I kind wonder how Harold Ramis would have directed this. And this movie makes me want to check out the Bar-Kays and "Soul Finger".

A fun enjoyable comedy:
If you didn't like the William Freidkin Chevy Chase espionage flick Deal of The Century (1983) You well enjoy this seemingly interesting, funny and slapstick comedy. It has hilaroius moments all throughout the movie but at the same time John Landis makes it real by exploring the Espionage and secret world of the government. Set in the time when the Soviets were in conflict with the U.S. Chase and Aykroyd go from Their oddball jobs to cheating on a test, to Secret operative training, and to Pakistan to pose as doctors (when they encounter The Afhgan freedom fighters they start to feel comfortable) until they find out for real that they are not doctors they escape to India and then ride camels to the USSR. It is a laughable comedy both stars are great this is probably their best collaberation. Directed by John Landis Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Donna Dixon, Frank Oz and Bob Hope

A HOPE/CROSBY STYLE "ROAD" PICTURE:
Spies like us is a tip of the hat to the great Bob Hope Bing Crosby "road pictures" of the 1940's. Chase and Dan Ackroyd play two low-level CIA agents who are sent on a rather bogus mission in Afghanistan to basically be expendable decoys. The boys are dropped inside a giant crate from a plane and when opened, they are lounging about eating Doritos! So well do they play their Hope Crosby roles that there is a tribute of sorts to the old patty-cake game when they encounter a couple of Russian agents. later, in the tent of a shiek they have to pretend to be doctors and perfrom surgery. Bobe Hope himself makes a cameo appearance. Of course, the boys eventually are the heroes of the movie and get the girls. Funny movie