Val Kilmer Was One of the ‘80s Funniest Comedy Stars

Val Kilmer, the actor famous for taking on Tom Cruise in Top Gun, the Riddler in Batman Forever and Johnny Ringo in Tombstone, passed away on Tuesday at age 65. But before Kilmer cemented his reputation as a powerful dramatic actor, he kicked off his career with some of the funniest performances of the 1980s.

Kilmer made his film debut in Top Secret!, the Zucker brothers’ criminally underrated follow-up to Airplane!. After the success of their disaster movie spoof, the Zuckers and Jim Abraham mashed together a parody of spy movies and Elvis musicals. Unlike Airplane!, which featured a cast of fading movie stars, ZAZ went with complete unknown Kilmer for the lead role of singer Nick Rivers.

“He did a reading, did a couple of songs, and we thought, Hey, this is the guy,” remembered David Zucker in a ScreenCrush oral history of Top Secret. 

“He could sing, he could move and he got the humor — he could deliver that line,” agreed Jerry Zucker. “And, of course, he looks beautiful on-screen.”

Top Secret!, joke for joke, might be funnier than Airplane!, although it flopped at the box office. The filmmakers blame themselves. “We thought we hit it out of the park, because it was so funny,” said David Zucker. “We knew we had the jokes.” 

The problem was a plot — or lack of one. “I think some of our best jokes are in Top Secret!,” explained Jerry Zucker, “but it’s really hurt by not having a story.”

Roger Ebert, who raved about the comedy, said Top Secret! didn’t need a plot, thanks to dazzling gags and “a funny young actor named Val Kilmer.”

“I'm always so pleased to get compliments about my very first film,” Kilmer said years later. “I almost never go through an airport or to a big game without someone making a point to quote a line or recount a scene and laugh.”

Even though Top Secret! wasn’t a huge hit, it impressed Hollywood enough to hire Kilmer to lead a second comedy, the college farce Real Genius. Kilmer played Chris Knight, a science prodigy who develops a revolutionary chemical laser. When he learns it will be used for dangerous purposes, he turns it into the world’s most elaborate prank. (It involved 140 tons of popcorn.)

Real Genius features one of the actor’s best performances, according to Variety. “Kilmer glides through the movie like an elfin jock in fuzzy animal slippers who lives on a cloud of superiority, bringing the perfect note of fake seriousness to lines like ‘You wanted to see me, your jogging-ness?’ and ‘I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, ‘I drank what?’’ The entire performance is a loop of spinning sarcasm that expresses, in early form, Kilmer’s distrust of the stardom that was about to come to him.”

Based on those two movies, Kilmer was up there with John Cusack and Anthony Michael Hall as Hollywood’s young princes of comedy. But like Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Kilmer used his funny breakthroughs as a ticket to more serious roles and left the laughs behind. By 2002, however, he wanted to return to comedy. “They won’t give me one,” he complained to Combustible Celluloid. “I ended up calling the Farrelly brothers, because I just think they’re so radical! They’ve set a new standard for oddness.”

Val Kilmer in Dumb and Dumber? That would have been something to see.