When I was younger, Top Gun was in my personal list of most-overrated movies of the 1980s. The list also included Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, E.T., and Dirty Dancing. I forget the others.
Interestingly, my opinion of FBDO and ET has improved over the years. For TG and DD, not so much. Yeah, 2 stars sounds about right to me.
But remember, someone once said that the rating system is entirely arbitrary and idioscyncratic, based only on the likes, dislikes, prejudices, & whims of the rater.
Hmm, I seem to recall hearing that somewhere, but where was it…hmm…
It may have had more stars before Tom Cruise got all weird and stuff. Maybe Comcast has adjusted it and that’s the “current” review rating.
There are times when Top Gun is just what I am in the mood for, sit back and enjoy the ride. And for that it is as ggod as they get. However, that’s like saying, when I am really in the mood for some junk food Fritos always does it for me. But within the pantheon of food, it ranks pretty much in the middle.
Top Gun feels the same way Miami Vice does to me. At the time it was The Shit, the coolest thing out there and cutting edge. I can’t believe how corny Miami Vice looks now, and Top Gun is downright painful in parts. So the average of the years comes out about in the middle.
More data points:
On Rotten Tomatoes, Top Gun got a 52% from critics (“rotten”) and a 74% from site users.
When did flying through the air become a “special effect”? I don’t know how to break it to Roger and Buck, but those airplanes that Maverick, et al., are strapping themselves in to actually exist. And they really fly and really fight each other. The flight scenes were bad because the director treated them like a special effect; lots of things flitting back and forth across the screen, and snappy dialog and closeups of the actors looking worried. But there wasn’t near the tension there should have been because there was no coherent snese of where things were, what was happening and why.
Umm… the combat scenes were lacking in authenticity. I mean, if you’re showing the Russians, maybe they should be flying Russian aircraft rather than F-5s?
It would have been hard to get real Russian airplanes, so I don’t mind them making the substitution. And they used a type that wasn’t used anywhere else in the movie, so at least the real-Russian (as opposed the the training Agressors) aircraft were distinct.
My problem was that they painted them shiny, gloss black. “Ooh, look evil they are. And shiny. And black, and evil, and stuff.” The Russians don’t want their planes to be seen any more than we do.
Funny, that works for the last three Star Wars films too.
It had swell production values, a talented and attractive cast, and a predictable plot and script. Two stars is a little harsh, but three would be generous. Its cultural importance is on a par with Die Hard and Lethal Weapon.
I like Kelly McGillis. Top Gun was not as good as Witness. I can separate Tom Cruise’s film career from his bizarre personal behavior. Top Gun was about half as good as Rain Man or A Few Good Men.
A 4-star movie is one that fires on all cylinders. Top Gun fired on about half of them. You should want more from a movie.
Let us not forget the endless supply of missiles from the left inboard wing station, or that they go to Top Gun because they are “too dependent upon missiles” and shoot down all the aircraft with missiles. Or the time when the "harddeck was 10,000 feet but they were pursuing through and around outcroppings (so much for safety with that one, guys). Or even the fact that the Tomcat carried the most powerful radar any fighter had at that time but it was never able to detect more than 2 planes, causing them to get taken by surprise every time.
Oh, yeah, the special effects were fabulous. Sure they were. Maybe if you know nothing about military aircraft and don’t mind continuity errors, that is.
Top Gun was ruined forever in my eyes by Quentin Tarantino’s brilliant monologue in Sleep With Me. Alas, this is the only part of Sleep With Me that was even passably watchable.
You like “shit”?
Top Gun made flying a fighter aircraft look like a lot of fun, while remaining somewhat dangerous to an appropriately manly degree. Frankly, any halfway competent movie about that particular subject should have been able to accomplish as much. The rest of it (IMO) was predictable hackwork, with thoroughly uninteresting performances by the actors (except, maybe, for Anthony Ewards) and not a single surprise in the plot.
Just to point something out: this movie was essentially remade, plot point for plot point, and with the same director and lead, as the NASCAR drama Days of Thunder. Hardly anyone would rate that as a classic, so other than being the first go-round of this story, why should Top Gun rate any higher?
I’m a guy who likes jet fighters and action movies, and really, I didn’t think Top Gun was very good at all. I remember I liked it when it came out and I was 14, but watching it now, it’s really quite poor, and I’m not sure I’d even give it two stars.
To answer your first question, the plot really doesn’t make any sense, taken cover to cover. The characters and dialogue are brutally formulaic, as if the script was auto-written by a program called “Jet Fighter Movie for Windows XP.” The love story between Cruise and Kelly McGillis is hideously awful. There isn’t actually THAT much action, really, and it’s not overly impressive by today’s standards. It’s also phenomenally homoerotic, although I guess whether that’s good, bad or indifferent is a subjective call.
As El Kabong points out, you would have to be either the biggest idiot on earth or deliberately trying to screw up to make a movie about Navy fighter pilots and NOT have some really cool scenes. But aside from the really cool scenes with F-14s, the movie blows.
Krokodil compares it to “Die Hard” and “Lethal Weapon” in terms of cultural importance, and I kind of agree with that; “Die Hard” is probably a lot more important, just in terms of the number of movies it inspired. But those were both BETTER movies than “Top Gun.”
Having been told by many a geek that The Matrix is a good movie, that obviously can’t be true. 
Top Gun is an awful movie if you watch it for the first time as an adult. I’m sorry, it was terribly cheesy. (To the OP - sorry. I’m a Doper, so by default I’m a nitpicker too.) Some of the dogfights were cool, but the interactions between the characters make me ill.
Because Top Gun is really a gay porn film at heart, only without cum shots.
Basic math:
Meg Ryan: +1 star (due to a minor role).
Kelly McGillis: +2 stars.
Tom Cruise: -1 star (jaw clenching is not acting).
Total: 2 stars.
I am amazed that people think that this was a “special effects” movie. Sure, a few explosions and such. But sheesh.
There was a lot of bad acting by actors in secondary roles who are generally good. The two most common reasons for this: really bad directing, or they all knew they were in a turkey and were phoning it in. I think it was both.