In a strange comedy story that tells of two unqualified people on an official mission. That story began when two low-level government officials, Emmett Fitz-Hume and Austin Milberg, were selected on a highly classified CIA mission. Although both men were not qualified, they were chosen as CIA agents. Over time, they have been trained strongly as they began their mission by parachuting into Pakistan to embark on a new and different mission.
There are seeds of something funny in the film's beginning and in its premise, but they are soon dissipated by so little sustained wit, and so much scenery.
Spirituality and Practice
August 21, 2004
Director John Landis likes to build elaborate cinematic toys, but this one is a comic clinker.
Time Out
June 24, 2006
The script is so patchy that most of the genuine laughs are squeezed into the first half; the rest is a rather tacky and confused extended joke about the nuclear arms race.
Once again proof that life is rough after Saturday Night Live.
Nolan's Pop Culture Review
November 11, 2004
Often funny film boasts no less then 10 film directors on screen in small roles. Stick around for the Paul McCartney penned title song.
Film4
May 24, 2003
[An] irritating comedy in which Aykroyd and Chase play officials who are sent on a secret mission as decoys whilst the real spies do their work. Their inadequacy is matched by a jokey script of dubious morals and taste.
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.
The movie has since become a cult classic; one that those of a certain age and gender have committed to near memory and can spout lines and scenes on command like a new Army recruit.
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.
