Top Gun or 80's Hell

We don't think we've watched Top Gun in 25 years.

Top Gun is unwatchable today, isn't it? The plot is utterly predictable, the tropes totally 80's. Right?

Tom Cruise is the talented and totally hot Maverick who plays by his own rules. He rides a motorcycle, he plays volleyball, he has a long gone father with the secret past...

[Go on, please? -Ed]

...can anyone really sit through all this today?

This blog wondered if we're just bitter and cyncical. So we looked up Roger Ebert's review of the film, and he saw the same thing. It's interesting that Top Gun's flaws and tropes aren't confined to the 80's, as Ebert notes: 

"Top Gun" settles fairly quickly into alternating ground and air scenes, and the simplest way to sum up the movie is to declare the air scenes brilliant and the earthbound scenes grimly predictable. This is a movie that comes in two parts: It knows exactly what to do with special effects, but doesn't have a clue as to how two people in love might act and talk and think.

Grimly predictable.

All true but audiences didn't care.