Honest Movie Reviews: 'Top Gun: Maverick' Is the Ultimate Dad Flick

In the latest edition of Honest Movie Reviews, we’re pulling together the funniest audience movie reviews on the internet. From funny to ironic, truthful to the downright silly, we’re diving into the deep, dark rabbit hole of online movie fandom. Today we turn our attention to Top Gun: Maverick.

Much like its predecessor, the sequel has once again become a cultural phenomenon. When the original Top Gun was released back in 1986, it left a major cultural footprint. Aside from making Tom Cruise a mega movie star, the film also inspired a generation of impressionable young boys to enter “the danger zone.” In the 34 years since Top Gun has managed to remain in the zeitgeist, even if it’s more for being arguably the most ’80s movie ever than actually being a good film.

Like most popular ’80s properties, Top Gun was a prime candidate to be exploited for a legacy sequel. However, that sequel was also 12 years in the making. Development began all the way back in 2010, with Cruise, Val Kilmer, Tony Scott, and Jerry Bruckheimer all returning. Due to the unfortunate suicide of director Tony Scott, along with Kilmer’s cancer diagnosis, the original version of the sequel was eventually shelved.

In 2017, however, director Joseph Kosinski joined the project, and principal photography lasted almost a year, from 2018 to 2019. Although the movie was originally scheduled for a 2019 release, it was first delayed due to the logistics of shooting the film’s complicated action sequences. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic, along with several other scheduling conflicts, led the film to be delayed for another two years. Cruise received pushback from Paramount due to his insistence on an exclusive theatrical release, and the studio threatened to drop the movie on its streaming service several times. As much as it pains us to say, it turns out that Cruise was right all along.

As it stands, Top Gun: Maverick is a massive worldwide hit because it reminds us why we go to the cinema. It garnered an overwhelming 97 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a rare A+ Cinema Score. As of this writing, the movie has grossed $557 million at the worldwide box office in less than two weeks (a lot for a non-superhero movie). While the movie has undoubtedly blown general audiences away, the people of the social media platform Letterboxd naturally have something to say. Here are the funniest reviews for Top Gun: Maverick, aka the ultimate dad movie.