Hot Shots! (1991) 20th Century Fox/Comedy RT: 85 minutes Rated PG-13 (language, comic violence, sexual content) Director: Jim Abrahams Screenplay: Jim Abrahams and Pat Proft Music: Sylvester Levay Cinematography: Bill Butler Release date: July 31, 1991 (US) Cast: Charlie Sheen, Cary Elwes, Valeria Golino, Lloyd Bridges, Jon Cryer, Kevin Dunn, Kristy Swanson, Bill Irwin, William O’Leary, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Ryan Stiles, Heidi Swedberg, Rino Thunder. Box Office: $69.4M (US)/$181M (World)
Rating: **
The spoof Hot Shots fails to soar to the deliriously funny heights achieved by Airplane and The Naked Gun and I know exactly why. It’s Zucker-less! It’s directed by Jim Abrahams, one-third of Team ZAZ (David Zucker, Abrahams and Jerry Zucker). While he has worked solo before (Big Business, Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael), Hot Shots is the first spoof he’s helmed without his two partners-in-comedy. The result is a mildly amusing send-up of Top Gun that misses its target more often than it hits.
The laughs, scattered though they may be, are there. Even then, it’s not the boisterous sort of laughter elicited by his previous efforts in the genre. I’ve long since learned that Airplane represents a level of excellence that no spoof will surpass much less reach. Nevertheless, many have tried to achieve the impossible which brings us to Hot Shots.
While far from the worst of its kind, Hot Shots doesn’t rank particularly high either. In its defense, it does have a few good points. Lead actor Charlie Sheen (Platoon) appears to have found his calling. He’s a funny guy (sometimes without even meaning to be). Abrahams affords him the opportunity to show off his comedy chops. Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride) also proves his comedic worth as the nemesis character. But all of this doesn’t amount to a hill of beans without a solid script that provides the actors with jokes that are actually funny. Most of Hot Shots sadly falls flat.
Retired Navy pilot Topper Harley (Sheen) is asked to return to active duty to help with a secret mission. He now lives among Native Americans as “Fluffy Bunny Feet” (as in bunny slippers). He has psychological problems as a result of his father’s death in a plane crash during a routine training exercise. The crash, caused by Buzz Harley’s (Irwin, My Blue Heaven) showing off, also caused the death of his co-pilot “Mailman” (Stiles, Two and a Half Men). Despite his heavy psychological baggage, Topper agrees to come back for one last mission.
His fellow pilots are the usual motley bunch found in movies like this. “Wash Out” (Cryer, Two and a Half Men) suffers from wall-eye vision. Nobody appears to notice that Kowalski (Swanson, Deadly Friend) is a woman. There’s a guy named “Dead Meat” (O’Leary, Bull Durham) whose fate is a foregone conclusion. Lt. Kent Gregory (Elwes) takes an immediate disliking to Topper because he’s a show-off who’s likely to get somebody killed. Also, it was his father that died in the plane crash with Topper’s dad. Things get tenser between the two rivals when Topper becomes romantically involved with his attractive therapist Ramada (Golino, Rain Man). Lt. Gregory was her man before Topper entered the picture. As it turns out, Lt. Commander Block (Dunn, Dave) has ulterior motives for recruiting Topper for “Operation Sleepy Weasel”. He’s in cahoots with shady airplane tycoon Wilson (Zimbalist, The FBI) and it would benefit them both greatly if the mission was to fail.
In addition to Top Gun, Hot Shots also takes pot shots at Dances with Wolves, 9 ½ Weeks, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Rocky, Gone with the Wind and Superman. It’s clear Abrahams understands the formula for spoof movies as he adheres to it completely. The movie’s downfall is the lack of decent gags. Simply put, most of them don’t work. I don’t mind corny gags or knowing exactly where the writers are going with a particular joke. This can be funny in its own way. What I do mind is a spoof that goes at it half-assed. Much of Hot Shots appears to be on autopilot. Even Lloyd Bridges as an admiral with more metallic artificial parts than a cyborg fails to deliver laughs. He was hysterical in Airplane (“It looks like I picked the wrong week to give up sniffing glue.”), but not so much here.
I don’t know, maybe the material seemed funny when Abrahams and co-writer Pat Proft (The Naked Gun) were putting it down on paper. I think they could have made more of an effort. For instance, wouldn’t it be funny to have Tom Cruise himself do a walk-on cameo? How about this? Cruise could show up at some random point, observe Sheen in action for a beat and say “You wish” before exiting. That would totally work.
Another difference between Airplane and Hot Shots is that the actors in the former played it completely straight. The actors in the latter appear to be in on the joke and act accordingly. The only original thing about Hot Shots is that Leslie Nielsen doesn’t appear in it. How many spoofs did he do after Airplane? Quite a lot. Abrahams selected a great target; Top Gun just begs to made fun of. It’s just too bad his send-up doesn’t work as well as it should. I’m not saying that Hot Shots is a complete crash-and-burn. How can it be when it barely gets off the ground?
