Movie Review: ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Exactly What You’d Expect

Top Gun: Maverick didn’t take my breath away, mainly because it flies straight into the Comfort Zone. Sticking rigorously to the Eighties blockbuster formula and serving up thick slabs of nostalgia, Tom Cruise has given us all a proud, defiant Dad Movie for men in their 50s. It’s a reasonably effective action movie with reasonably exciting dogfights that sends you home going, “Well, that was exactly what I expected.”

This play-the-oldies effort even starts out by literally playing an oldie (Kenny Loggins’s “Danger Zone”), re-running the introductory info from the 1986 original, and restaging shots such as the one in which Maverick grins brightly enough to be visible from space while racing next to the runway on his motorcycle. Despite one of the most intriguing credits of the year — “Music by Harold Faltermeyer, Lady Gaga and Hans Zimmer” — the movie, blandly directed by Cruise’s handpicked choice Joseph Kosinski, makes no attempt to blend styles or adapt to the 21st century. I mostly approve; the movie makes no cringey effort to distance itself from the past with any of that, “You’re a dinosaur, James Bond, how dare you flirt with women” nonsense. Still, I couldn’t help thinking of the wrong 1986 movie: Back to School. Cruise is Rodney Dangerfield, except he doesn’t see the joke.

About the Author

Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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Top Gun: Maverick didn’t take my breath away, mainly because it flies straight into the Comfort Zone. Sticking rigorously to the Eighties blockbuster formula and serving up thick slabs of nostalgia, Tom Cruise has given us all a proud, defiant Dad Movie for men in their 50s. It’s a reasonably effective action movie with reasonably exciting dogfights that sends you home going, “Well, that was exactly what I expected.”

This play-the-oldies effort even starts out by literally playing an oldie (Kenny Loggins’s “Danger Zone”), re-running the introductory info from the 1986 original, and restaging shots such as the one in which Maverick grins brightly enough to be visible from space while racing next to the runway on his motorcycle. Despite one of the most intriguing credits of the year — “Music by Harold Faltermeyer, Lady Gaga and Hans Zimmer” — the movie, blandly directed by Cruise’s handpicked choice Joseph Kosinski, makes no attempt to blend styles or adapt to the 21st century. I mostly approve; the movie makes no cringey effort to distance itself from the past with any of that, “You’re a dinosaur, James Bond, how dare you flirt with women” nonsense. Still, I couldn’t help thinking of the wrong 1986 movie: Back to School. Cruise is Rodney Dangerfield, except he doesn’t see the joke.