Hot Shots! (1991)
Directed by Jim Abrahams
The gang that created Airplane! and The Naked Gun sets its sights on Top Gun in this spoof. Topper Harley is a talented but unstable fighter pilot with an axe to grind: clearing the family name. His mission is to avenge his father and save a mission sabotaged by greedy weapons manufacturers. He also gets involved in a relationship with Ramada Thompson, a woman with an unusually talented stomach. Hot Shots! makes fun of a variety of other films, from Dances with Wolves to The Fabulous Baker Boys.
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What critics say influenced Hot Shots!
No film that pokes fun at "Top Gun" can be all bad, and that's what "Hot Shots!" is -- a spoof of the Tom Cruise hit.
"Top Gun" and "Ruthless People."
This Kentucky Fried movie dogs Top Gun like canned laughter dogging a feeble joke.
Hot Shots!, a very funny parody of Top Gun, might have seemed even juicier had it come out a few years ago, when the '80s aesthetic of synth-pop militarism was in full swing.
Breaking up the ZAZ (Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker) squad that founded the whole subgenre with pictures like “Airplane!” and “The Kentucky Fried Movie,” Abrahams decided to strike out on his own with this extended “Top Gun” riff, bringing in Pat Proft to help mastermind the script.
Hot Shots! is a send-up of Top Gun and other macho movies with heart, likely to appeal to both male and female viewers.
"Hot Shots!" also parodies "Dances With Wolves," "Superman," "Gone With the Wind," "Rocky," and for film buffs, "Marathon Man," "The Right Stuff," "91/2 Weeks," "The Fabulous Baker Boys" . . .
While bodies are hurled all over the frame, the finer moments of the movie are reserved for the parody sequences, taking on the likes of “The Fabulous Baker Boys,” “9 1/2 Weeks,” and “Marathon Man,” virtually ensuring prolonged parent/child Q&A sessions on the car ride home.
Tom Cruise gets lampooned not only via "Top Gun," but also with quick glances at "Cocktail" and "The Color of Money."
"Hot Shots!" also parodies "Dances With Wolves," "Superman," "Gone With the Wind," "Rocky," and for film buffs, "Marathon Man," "The Right Stuff," "91/2 Weeks," "The Fabulous Baker Boys" . . .
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Tom Cruise gets lampooned not only via "Top Gun," but also with quick glances at "Cocktail" and "The Color of Money."
"Hot Shots!" also parodies "Dances With Wolves," "Superman," "Gone With the Wind," "Rocky," and for film buffs, "Marathon Man," "The Right Stuff," "91/2 Weeks," "The Fabulous Baker Boys" . . .
Breaking up the ZAZ (Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker) squad that founded the whole subgenre with pictures like “Airplane!” and “The Kentucky Fried Movie,” Abrahams decided to strike out on his own with this extended “Top Gun” riff, bringing in Pat Proft to help mastermind the script.
Leslie Nielsen, hilarious as he is in the Naked Gun series, has never been so bone-dry in the second-act comedy career this film launched; Lloyd Bridges, likewise, is amusing in the Hot Shots! movies but completes a perfect slow burn into insanity here (the ‘wrong day to quit smoking’ becomes the ‘wrong day to quiet amphetamines’).
It is to "Top Gun" what "Airplane" was to the "Airport" movies, what the "Naked Gun" movies are to dumb television cop shows -- it's "Naked Top Gun." Abrahams, the middle member of the trio of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, who made "Airplane!" and the "Naked Gun" films, knows a solid formula when he see one, and he doesn't depart a millimeter from it.
For the uninitiated, ZAZ is Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, the three writer-directors of "Airplane!"
Directed by Jim Abrahams (of the Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker team), the movie uses Airplane!-style silly-surreal jokes to blast holes in the Reagan era's most shameless fly-boy fantasy.
Breaking up the ZAZ (Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker) squad that founded the whole subgenre with pictures like “Airplane!” and “The Kentucky Fried Movie,” Abrahams decided to strike out on his own with this extended “Top Gun” riff, bringing in Pat Proft to help mastermind the script.