Many of the jokes in Spies Like Us, and the central tenet to the film's plot, is the Cold War; the most telling plot moment, however, is Bob Hope's cameo as a golfer in Pakistan. Thanks to Hope's disconnectedness as a golfer in a scene framed within a Pakistani rebel camp and his awareness of Millbarge (Aykroyd) and Fitzhume's (Chase) CIA rouse, Spies Like Us is paying homage to a slew of road comedy films involving a traveling Bob Hope alongside Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour.
One of those in particular, Road to Morocco, coincided with the US landing in Africa during Operation Torch. Here, Landis peppers slapstick over the Soviet Bloc and keeps the desert wasteland. Like the Road to... films, where plot is relatively out the window and used as a device to set up gags, the pair's various topical encounters tend to just be hilarity. However in Spies, the action takes place not in a foreign land, but right within their own country and a severely heightened climax (nuclear holocaust) takes the place of a simple female rescuing.
Millbarge and Fitzhume's military training is mindless, establishing jokes about G-force thresholds and flame resistance, but not afraid to tread on the complexities of the military-industrial complex. A Star Wars like defense system WAMP, special GLG-20 agents and a psychopathic patriot General Sline (Stephen Forrest) [a la Kubrick's General Jack D. Ripper] coincide with Reagan portraits dotted about the Pentagon. Millbarge's quip about doing "your work for you" to his supervisor and his new found reluctance to now "...setup the Disney Channel...for free..." comes shortly after he decodes Communist Chinese radio transmissions with a decoder he found in a box of Lucky Charms.
Like the Road to... films Spies Like Us parody the war and spy genres. Fitzhume's charge question a group of assumed contacts is "Who led the American League in home runs in 1953?" The response is an entire cadre of weapons drawn, but instead of being apprehended, Fitzhume wades into the group for a lost-in-translation negotiations exchange where Millbarge's head is nearly given off for polo. This abrasiveness between the pair, prevalent, at times, between Hope and Crosby, never takes away from their mission.
Landis has created a fitting homage to the classic and historically important travelogue genres. Chase and Aykroyd bring a fresh twist to old tricks, respectfully thanks to the backdrop of the 1980s. The cast and crew are not short of help thanks to cameos from directors Terry Gilliam, Joel Coen and Sam Raimi; special effects wunderkinds Ray Harryahusen and Derek Meddings; and NBC news correspondent Edwin Newman.
