The Experts is a 1989 Cold War comedy movie starring John Travolta and Arye Green as a pair of down-on-their-luck aspiring nightclub owners who are hired to open a venue in a small town whose mindset is stuck in the 1950s. The town is secretly a KGB training facility, and its unwitting new instructors inadvertently bring a cultural rebellion with them. James Keach, Kelly Preston, and Charles Martin Smith also appear.
Tropes in the Film
- Gone Horribly Right: The eponymous characters are tricked into going into the Soviet Union to teach trainee spies to act more like contemporary Americans. They end up being so successful that the spies and their trainers begin acting too American for their government’s tastes, and defect en masse rather than give up their new lifestyle or let their new friends be executed.
- Imposter Forgot One Detail: The opening scene shows KGB trainee Bonnie going through a fake job interview to test her ability to pass as an American. After Mr. Smith proves that she doesn’t know the meaning of commonplace modern phrases like "oyster bar," he uses this to convince his bosses that they need to update their training program with instructors who have been to America since the 1950s.
- Man of the City: Mr. Smith has spent years running the town that trains Soviet agents and is deeply concerned about his boss wanting to uproot the lives of its residents when the experiment is deemed a failure, to the point that he is among those who defect and helps recreate the town in America.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Yuri is imprisoned just because of how much he knows about the secret KGB training town after bringing a planeload of supplies there. This later causes the other people who want to escape the town to have the services of a good pilot.
- The Scapegoat: The phony reverend of the town is blamed by his superiors for the mass defection despite being one of the only people in the group to remain thoroughly dedicated to the Soviet mission and the most efficient of everyone who tried to stop the escape.
