Hot Shots! **** (1991, Charlie Sheen, Cary Elwes, Valeria Golino, Lloyd Bridges, Kristy Swanson, Kevin Dunn, Jon Cryer, Efrem Zimbalist Jr, Bill Irwin) – Classic Movie Review 8862

Director Jim Abrahams’s 1991 Hot Shots! is an often hilarious Airplane!-style parody of Top Gun and all the other aviator movies (plus for good measure and for no particular reason Dances with Wolves, Gone with the Wind, Superman, The Fabulous Baker Boys and Ghost).

Charlie Sheen, not known for his light comic touch, is unexpectedly adept and amusing as the straight but unbalanced airman Topper Harley battling his late dad’s bad flying record. Cary Elwes is soft and silly as his caddish opponent Kent Gregory, and Valeria Golino looks lovely as the love interest, Ramada Thompson (and she gets to play Scarlett O’Hara and Lois Lane too). But it’s Airplane! graduate Lloyd Bridges who easily steals the show as the daffy, brain-dead Admiral ‘Tug’ Benson.

Film knowledge helps as there are movie jokes galore. It is written by Jim Abrahams and Pat Proft.

Hot Shots! is a darned good shot and was a big hit. Abrahams’s sequel Hot Shots! Part Deux duly followed in 1993 with Sheen, Bridges and Golino.

Also in the cast are Kristy Swanson, Kevin Dunn, Jon Cryer, Efrem Zimbalist Jr, Bill Irwin, William O’Leary and Heidi Swedberg. Jerry Haleva plays Saddam Hussein, Tony Lorea plays Humphrey Bogart, Bob Lenz plays Elvis Presley, Willie Collins plays Liberace and Eugene Greytak plays Pope John Paul II.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8862

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