Austin Millbarge is a code breaker dwelling in the dark basement at the Pentagon who aspires to escape his under-respected job to become a secret agent. Emmett Fitz-Hume, a wisecracking, pencil-pushing son of an envoy, takes the foreign service exam under peer pressure. Millbarge and Fitz-Hume meet during the test, on which Fitz-Hume openly cheats after his attempts to bribe his female supervisor and the test monitor in exchange for the answers both fail. Millbarge was not prepared to take the test, having had only one night to study after his supervisor deliberately withheld a two-weeks notice for the exam, leaving him vulnerable to fail and having to remain in the bowels of the Pentagon.
Needing two expendable covert agents to act as decoys to draw attention away from a more capable team, Ruby and Keyes of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) decide to enlist Fitz-Hume and Millbarge, promote them to GLG-20 Foreign Service Operatives, rush them through minimal military survival training, and then send them on an undefined mission inside Pakistan and Soviet Central Asia. Meanwhile, the two professional agents are well on their way to carry out the actual objective: the seizure of a mobile SS-50 ICBM launcher in Soviet territory. A member of the main team is killed, while Millbarge and Fitz-Hume manage to escape multiple enemy attacks and eventually encounter Karen Boyer, the surviving operative from the main team.
In the Pamir Mountains of the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, the trio disguises themselves in hastily constructed extraterrestrial outfits and tranquilizes the mobile missile guard unit. Following orders in real-time from the intelligence agency (operating from the W.A.M.P. military bunker located deep under an abandoned drive-in theater in Nevada), they begin to operate the launcher. At the end of their instructions, the vehicle launches the ICBM into space, targeting an unspecified area in the Continental United States. Thinking they have started a nuclear war, the American agents and their Soviet counterparts pair up to have sex before the world is destroyed.
Meanwhile, Ruby and Keyes have joined Generals Sline and Miegs, the two military commanders at W.A.M.P., in the operations bunker. They initiate the conversion of the drive-in theater to expose what is hidden beneath the screens and projection booth: a huge black-opSDI-esque laser and collector/emitter screen. The purpose of sending the agents to launch a Soviet ICBM is exposed as a means to test this anti-ballistic missile system, but the laser malfunctions and fails to intercept the missile. Despite this, Sline and Miegs choose not to inform the President and the US Government that the missile launch was not a nuclear attack initiated by the Soviet Union, revealing to the horrified Ruby and Keyes, a twisted contingency plan of letting the impending thermonuclear war commence to "preserve the American way of life".
Back in the Soviet Union, horrified at the thought of having launched a nuclear missile at their own country, Milbarge realizes that the missile can be diverted. The American spies and Soviet technicians quickly use Millbarge's knowledge of missile guidance systems to transmit instructions that deflect the missile off into space where it harmlessly detonates. Immediately after, the underground W.A.M.P. bunker is located and stormed by U.S. Army Rangers, Ruby, Keyes and the rogue military officials involved in the unauthorized covert operation are all arrested. Millbarge, Fitz-Hume, and Boyer go on to become nuclear disarmament negotiators, playing a nuclear version of Risk-meets-Trivial Pursuit against their new Soviet friends.
The title song, "Spies Like Us", was written and performed by Paul McCartney. The recording peaked at #7 on the singles chart in the United States in early 1986; The song was McCartney's last to reach the top ten in the US until 2015.[7] It also reached #13 in the UK.[8] John Landis directed a music video for the song where Aykroyd and Chase are seen in a recording studio, performing the song with McCartney (although they didn't actually play on the record).[citation needed]
Landis has stated that he feels "Spies Like Us" is "a terrible song" but he couldn't say no to McCartney and Warner Bros.[9]
Spies Like Us grossed $8.6 million on its US opening weekend and ultimately grossed $60 million in the United States and Canada[3] against a budget of $22 million.[2][11] The film grossed $17.2 million overseas[12] for a worldwide total of $77.3 million.[3]
Critical reception
The Washington Post critic Paul Attanasio called Spies Like Us "a comedy with exactly one laugh, and those among you given to Easter egg hunts may feel free to try and find it".[13] The Chicago Reader critic Dave Kehr criticized the character development, saying that "Landis never bothers to account for the friendship that springs up spontaneously between these two antipathetic types, but then he never bothers to account for anything in this loose progression of recycled Abbott and Costello riffs".[14]The New York Times critic Janet Maslin wrote: "The stars are always affable, and they're worth watching even when they do very little, but it's painful to sit by as the screenplay runs out of steam."[15]
Variety magazine opined in a staff review: "Spies is not very amusing. Though Chase and Aykroyd provide moments, the overall script thinly takes on eccentric espionage and nuclear madness, with nothing new to add."[16]TV Guide published a staff review, stating: "Landis' direction is indulgent, to say the least, with big landscapes, big crashes, big hardware, and big gags filling the screen. What he forgets is character development, that all-important factor that must exist for comedy to work well."[17] David Parkinson, writing for the Radio Times, felt that "Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase simply fail to gel, and there's little fun to be had once the boisterous training school gags are exhausted."[18]
Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes shows a score of 35% based on 26 reviews and an average rating of 4.5/10. The site's consensus states: "Despite the comedic prowess of its director and two leads, Spies Like Us appears to disavow all knowledge of how to make the viewer laugh."[19]Metacritic displays a score of 22 out of 100, based on 9 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[20] Writing for Common Sense Media, Andrea Beach called the film a "dated '80s comedy [with] strong language, few laughs".[21]Collider staff writer Jeff Giles, reviewing the film's Blu-ray Disc release, stated: "on the whole, it’s more amusing than funny; it’s only 102 minutes, but it feels too long by half. For all the talent involved, there’s an awful lot of flab. It’s the kind of movie you can walk away from for 10 minutes without missing anything important."[22]
Legacy
Animated sitcom Family Guy paid tribute to the film with its 2009 episode "Spies Reminiscent of Us", which guest starred Aykroyd and Chase as fictionalized versions of themselves who, according to the series, were made real spies by Ronald Reagan after he saw the film. The episode recreates numerous scenes.[23][24]
^McGrath, Nick (February 4, 2016). "Dan Aykroyd's Travelling Life". The Telegraph. ISSN0307-1235. Retrieved September 21, 2022. Favourite film location? We shot some of Spies Like Us in Norway, on the top of a mountain near Sognefjord.
^Davis, Tom (2009). Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL. New York: Grove Press. p. 217.
^Attanasio, Paul (December 9, 1985). "Movies". Retrieved April 23, 2018 – via The Washington Post.
^Kehr, Dave (October 26, 1985). "Spies Like Us". Chicago Reader. Archived from the original on April 24, 2018. Retrieved April 23, 2018.
^Maslin, Janet (December 6, 1985). "Screen: 'Spies Like Us'". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 23, 2018. Retrieved April 23, 2018.
^"Spies Like Us". Variety. January 1, 1985. Archived from the original on April 23, 2018. Retrieved April 23, 2018.
