That's What Passes for a Good Movie These Days?

The other thing I did on Sunday was finish watching "Top Gun: Maverick", which I'd made three previous attempts to watch and only managed ten minutes (the joy of Funsize and Surprise! discovering TV). It was one of a handful of things I wanted to watch before our Paramount+ subscription expires (the remaining two being "Scream 5" and a second watch of the D&D movie).

Anyway, I had been quite hopeful about TG:M, as it had had some rather good reviews.

Um...

The film follows a time-honoured formula: Maverick is a hotshot pilot who falls afoul of authority. He finds himself called back to Top Gun as an instructor, taking on the mentor role from the original film. There he deals with students with such well-developed personalities as "the arrogant one", "the angry one", "the female one", and, um, "the other one". (There only being three character traits possible for a fighter pilot, and "has boobs" is one of them.)

He also rekindles an on/off affair with Generic Bar-owner #1, in which Jennifer Connelly does her absolute best with a character with no personalty at all. (In theory, the character does also have the hook that she's a single mother. But as far as I can tell, her daughter exists for the sole reason that the two of them can have a conversation about a boat, thus passing the Bechdel Test.)

Anyway.

Maverick has to train his students for an almost impossible mission: they have to blow up a uranium refinement plant in an entirely-undefined enemy nation (might as well be Canada). The approach to this will not be easy: they are required to skim the surface to this point. Then they have to hit a target point that is only two metres wide. Oh, and they have to use missiles, presumably because the shaft is ray shielded. (They even have a bit where one of the characters has to make do without a targeting system, presumably using the Force instead.)

Throw in a couple of scenes lifted almost whole-cloth from the original (replacing beach volleyball with beach football), and then add a handful of callbacks to the first film to tug on nostalgia. And we're done.

On the one hand, it's a work of absolute genius - huge numbers of people went to see it and by all accounts had a great time, and to do that with no originality in either characters or story is impressive. On the other hand, it's just plain silly.

So I must admit, I'm perplexed as to how it can have garnered such impressive reviews - I can buy "terrific, brainless fun", but anything beyond that...?