{"id":3883,"date":"2024-09-07T02:49:23","date_gmt":"2024-09-07T02:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=3883"},"modified":"2024-10-14T11:58:41","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T15:58:41","slug":"hot-shots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/07\/hot-shots\/","title":{"rendered":"Hot Shots!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Hot Shots! <\/strong>(1991)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th<\/sup> Century Fox\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 85 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (language, comic violence, sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jim Abrahams\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jim Abrahams and Pat Proft\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Sylvester Levay\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Bill Butler\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 31, 1991 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Charlie Sheen, Cary Elwes, Valeria Golino, Lloyd Bridges, Jon Cryer, Kevin Dunn, Kristy Swanson, Bill Irwin, William O\u2019Leary, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Ryan Stiles, Heidi Swedberg, Rino Thunder.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $69.4M (US)\/$181M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\n

\u00a0The spoof Hot Shots<\/strong> fails to soar to the deliriously funny heights achieved by Airplane and The Naked Gun and I know exactly why. It\u2019s Zucker-less! It\u2019s 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 <\/strong>is the first spoof he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The laughs, scattered though they may be, are there. Even then, it\u2019s not the boisterous sort of laughter elicited by his previous efforts in the genre. I\u2019ve 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<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0While far from the worst of its kind, Hot Shots<\/strong> doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019t amount to a hill of beans without a solid script that provides the actors with jokes that are actually funny. Most of Hot Shots <\/strong>sadly falls flat.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Retired 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 \u201cFluffy Bunny Feet\u201d (as in bunny slippers). He has psychological problems as a result of his father\u2019s death in a plane crash during a routine training exercise. The crash, caused by Buzz Harley\u2019s (Irwin, My Blue Heaven) showing off, also caused the death of his co-pilot \u201cMailman\u201d (Stiles, Two and a Half Men). Despite his heavy psychological baggage, Topper agrees to come back for one last mission.<\/p>\n

\u00a0His fellow pilots are the usual motley bunch found in movies like this. \u201cWash Out\u201d (Cryer, Two and a Half Men) suffers from wall-eye vision. Nobody appears to notice that Kowalski (Swanson, Deadly Friend) is a woman. There\u2019s a guy named \u201cDead Meat\u201d (O\u2019Leary, Bull Durham) whose fate is a foregone conclusion. Lt. Kent Gregory (Elwes) takes an immediate disliking to Topper because he\u2019s a show-off who\u2019s likely to get somebody killed. Also, it was his father that died in the plane crash with Topper\u2019s 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 \u201cOperation Sleepy Weasel\u201d. He\u2019s in cahoots with shady airplane tycoon Wilson (Zimbalist, The FBI) and it would benefit them both greatly if the mission was to fail.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In addition to Top Gun, Hot Shots<\/strong> also takes pot shots at Dances with Wolves, 9 \u00bd Weeks, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Rocky, Gone with the Wind and Superman. It\u2019s clear Abrahams understands the formula for spoof movies as he adheres to it completely. The movie\u2019s downfall is the lack of decent gags. Simply put, most of them don\u2019t work. I don\u2019t 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<\/strong> 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 (\u201cIt looks like I picked the wrong week to give up sniffing glue.\u201d), but not so much here.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I don\u2019t 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\u2019t 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 \u201cYou wish\u201d before exiting. That would totally work.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Another difference between Airplane and Hot Shots<\/strong> 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<\/strong> is that Leslie Nielsen doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s just too bad his send-up doesn\u2019t work as well as it should. I\u2019m not saying that Hot Shots<\/strong> is a complete crash-and-burn. How can it be when it barely gets off the ground?\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hot Shots! (1991)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th Century Fox\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 85 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (language, comic violence, sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jim Abrahams\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jim Abrahams and Pat Proft\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Sylvester Levay\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Bill Butler\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 31, 1991 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Charlie Sheen, Cary Elwes, Valeria Golino, Lloyd Bridges, Jon Cryer, Kevin Dunn, Kristy Swanson, Bill Irwin, William […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4958,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Hot-Shots-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3883"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4959,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3883\/revisions\/4959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}