While some may say it’s too early in the year to start picking the top content from it, we can say for sure that Top Gun: Maverick is the best dad movie of 2022.

While that may sound like a backhanded compliment, it’s really not. The dad movie has some strict requirements such as action, a familiar cast, vehicles going way too fast and, for many bonus points, an older character who schools the younger generation with pure tenacity and experience.

In Top Gun: Maverick those are just about the main beats and, because it’s a sequel from an 80s classic, you have a lot of nostalgia to win more points.

While we don’t think it’s really possible to spoil a movie like this the basic plot here is that Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is still in the Navy and still a Captain after choosing to continue flying planes instead of taking promotions and parking behind a desk.

He’s called back to the Top Gun flight school programme to train new, young hotshot pilots for a dangerous, seemingly suicidal mission. Making things more complicated is one of the pilots, Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller) who is the son of Maverick’s dead RIO Goose.

The plot here is, by a long way, the shoddiest part of the experience and doesn’t really exist to tell a story but purely to move things along.

Why things happen takes a distant back seat to how they happen because, if you stop to think about the logic behind it for a second, the whole charade falls apart.

This less than stellar writing extends to the dialogue too with characters speaking like no human ever would.

Thankfully, despite the not so great writing, the cast does run with it well.

There’s maybe one or two scenes without Cruise in them which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it’s always fun to see him do his thing in movies. He’s still very charming and likeable to watch after all these years and you do get a sense of continuity for the Maverick character outside of the same actor playing him.

Cruise also delivers in scenes without dialogue or when most of his face is covered up by a a helmet and breathing apparatus. Expect to hear a lot of grunting and and audible straining to sell the fact that he’s pulling Gs in these planes, which isn’t entirely just acting as a lot of real military hardware was used in filming.

The rest of the cast also does their jobs well but it feels like they’re here to just be a springboard for Cruise and to react to what he’s doing. Everyone else not named Tom falls firmly into the “supporting character” roll and we can’t point to anyone being better or worse than the other.

For those who want to ignore the writing and acting in a movie like this you’re justified as the cinematography is top notch.

As mentioned there’s a lot of real planes and flying here. While we’re sure a decent amount of CGI was used to clean things up and even replace certain scenes, so much of this movie and its action feels tangible.

This is more impressive when, again without spoiling anything, we’re mostly watching lower stakes flight training and not outright combat filled with bullets and explosions.

Director Joseph Kosinski and his team did a commendable job selling the razor’s edge of what fighter pilots do and the entire unhinged notion of what fighter jets are.

Helping the visuals is the audio. We were surprised by how reserved it is at times. We recently re-watched the original 1986 movie and boy does it blast you with its popular songs as often as possible.

2022’s Maverick is more sparring with the music and lets the audio of jets, turbulence and silence shine through when appropriate. Is there a lot of cheese and schmaltzy moments where the music is laid on thick? Sure, but it’s the exception and not the rule.

Cheese and schmaltz is probably the best way to describe this movie but, again, not in a bad way. Sometimes it’s fun to just sit down and inhale a kilo of popcorn and litre of Slush Puppie and enjoy something silly that revels in fun.

This is an old school kind of blockbuster for the modern era free of a lot of the cynicism that seeps into similar projects.

At this point we do want to talk about the theatre experience as we think seeing this on smaller screens or even at home will greatly diminish the experience.

When spectacle is the main point of a movie, and that really is the point here, where and how you take in that spectacle becomes a large part of the enjoyment.

Looking at our rating below keep that in mind. With story, writing and character on the poor side here and the intensity of the visuals and audio being so important, Top Gun: Maverick is a movie you want to see on the biggest screen possible.

If you are the kind of person who only sees one or two movies a year, catch this one, and take your dad with.