Hot Shots! (1991)

	Directed by: Jim Abrahams	COUNTRY USA GENRE Comedy NORWEGIAN TITLE Hot Shots! RUNNING TIME 85 minutes
	Produced by: Bill Badalato
	Written by: Pat Proft Jim Abrahams

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Topper Harley	Charlie Sheen	½
Kent Gregory	Cary Elwes	½
Ramada	Valeria Golino
Admiral "Tug" Benson	Lloyd Bridges	½
Lt. Commander Block	Kevin Dunn
Jim "Washout" Pfaffenbach	Jon Cryer	½
Kowalski	Kristy Swanson

Review

After the wildly successful Airplane! and The Naked Gun series, Jim Abrahams went solo, casting Charlie Sheen in the Leslie Nielsen role and bringing back the hilarious Lloyd Bridges to make another genre spoof – this time harassing war mission films in general and Top Gun in particular. The humour is the same, although in Hot Shots! it is slightly less intellectual than in Airplane! (when it comes to dialogue and puns etc.) and slightly less focused on sex than in The Naked Gun. A lot of the time it works, and Hot Shots! has its fair share of funny material, but the script by Abrahams and Pat Proft isn't quite of the same standard as with the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team's previous outings, and the deadpan comedy and background details don't feel as fresh as they used to. Maybe this has more to do with the fact that the jokes here sometimes fall short, despite Sheen rising to the occasion (more so than in most of his more serious work). The singular Mr. Bridges livens things up, but not even he comes close to replicating his own McCroskey (which is one of the best comedic performances ever captured on film). Hot Shots! might do the trick to the extent that it will make you laugh, but sometimes it's just hard to get out of the shadow of a more successful brother.