Let’s go with “adorably awful,” because “delightfully dumb” seems like a stretch.

“Mayday” is a pseudo-serious send-up of “Top Gun” starring two guys who should know better, but whose way with a punch line ensures it’ll at least serve up a few laughs.

Ryan Reynolds plays a hotshot 1980s Navy fighter pilot shot down “Behind Enemy Lines” who requires the help of an ex-KGB agent (Kenneth Branagh) gone Grizzly Adams, holed up in the wilderness, to get out.

They have many brawls and shootouts and narrow escapes in this action comedy.

When I first glanced at the ads for this Apple TV release, I thought they’d paired up RR with Zach Galifianakis, Look at that photo and tell me I’m seeing things.

I mean, come on.

We meet the hotshot pilot named Troy whose call sign is “Assassin” as he’s helping a fellow pilot get his F-18 on the deck of their carrier in the most outlandish or at least implausible means possible.

That puts Troy in line to fly in the second seat on an SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. No training or anything, he’s just plopped into the “black ops mission” jet and flown over the Soviet Union to photograph some new missile silos.

The pilot is killed when they’re shot down, and Troy is injured. But when he wakes up — to the sight of a Tom Cruise in “Top Gun” poster — he discovers he’s been saved by a big-bearded, half-ass-accented Ivan (actually Nikolai, “Call me NEEEEeek!”) who loves all things American — Springsteen and “Top Gun” especially.

Nikolai will help the out-of-his-depth Americanski escape, but not until “the Cold War is over.” Sure, Gorbachev’s in power and he and chickenhawk Reagan are talking. But Troy bolts free to try and call the AMERICAN EMBASSY from a Russkie roadhouse. That…doesn’t go well.

And so on.

This two-hander — with Marcin Doracinski as the KGB chief hunting them, Maria Bakalova as “the daughter” and David Morse as the sickly ex-shipbuilder dad “back home” — borrows from the titles mentioned above, “Top Gun” and “Behind Enemy Lines,” and also the Eastwood Soviet era thriller “Firefox.”

But co-writers/directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (they did the latest “Dungeons and Dragons” and also “Game Night”) are more interested in finding laughs than fretting over plot points.

The running gags start with “Top Gun” references and Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” LP — on cassette, of course.

The punchlines are peppered with “ride into the danger zone” jokes and “Red Roof Inn” references. Not really side splitters, but the fights are fun and there are sight gags in the finale that will make your jaw drop before the guffaw comes out.

Just remember, the title has two meanings and Reynolds turns 50 in October and Branagh is 65 and no Liam Neeson, so it’s all kind of a stunt man/makeup team/CGI assisted lark.

And “dumb” becomes a given, right from the start.

Rating: PG-13, violence, some profanity

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Kenneth Branagh, Maria Bakalova, Donald Sales, Wendy Crewson and David Morse.

Credits: Scripted and directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein An Apple TV+ release.

Running time: 1:50