8/28/2023 0 Comments Hot shots deux![]() ![]() Starting with Kentucky Fried Movie in 1977, and reaching the heights of Airplane! and Police Squad!, David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker bestrode the earth as veritable gods, albeit ones whose powers topped out at jokes where the punchline is taking a phrase too literally. You can trace this downward slide to irrelevance and oblivion back to Hot Shots! Part Deux, which besides celebrating its quarter-century anniversary this month is also the last exit sign of what would seem to be the golden age of spoof: the ZAZ era. (You might now recognize this as the dominant humour model of the internet, which at least has the excuse of not paying most of its writers.) Since then, few others have even bothered to try. Since at least the turn of the millennium, almost the only spoofs to get green-lit were dirt-cheap, bargain-bin affairs, comedies so beholden to assembly-line efficiency they could not even really muster jokes so much as parade the most fleeting, knee-jerk pop-cultural references across the screen, hoping that seeing these things within the context of a (genre) movie would be incongruous enough to get a stimulus-response laugh. If anything, Hollywood has done all it could to kill the genre outright. Hollywood has spent the intervening 25 years putting the Fordian factory production model to shame, but the pure movie parody – with essentially no redeeming virtue beyond being stupidly funny and, I guess, pointing out how generally ridiculous film and film-culture convention is – is nowhere to be found. “As long as the Hollywood assembly lines keep groaning,” he answers himself, “there will probably be a function for these corrective measures.”īeing a film critic involves a lot corrective re-evaluation, but it still feels safe to say that America’s reviewer was never more bitterly, horribly, unquestionably wrong than he was when casually speculating on the future of deadpan kitchen-sink spoof movies. “Will this genre ever run out of steam?” Roger Ebert asks in what is pretty close to a glowing review of Hot Shots! Part Deux, Jim Abrahams’s 1993 parody of, most approximately, Rambo III. ( K.Lloyd Bridges stars in Hot Shots! Part Deux, a film built out of the classic Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker format, which is essentially to make sure every shot has a joke somewhere, on the assumption that some of them have to be funny to someone. Both Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux are strong optional purchases. The disc includes two expendable segments about the film's production. Highlights include an inspired reference to Apocalypse Now involving Charlie's dad, Martin Sheen a charming moment when Sheen and Golino re-enact the romantic spaghetti dinner scene from Lady and the Tramp, and a fun turn from good sport Richard Crenna, who spoofs his own role in the Rambo trilogy. Harley, "the best of what we have left," is recruited to lead a mission to rescue American hostages in the Middle East. Still, fans are advised to stay tuned for the end credits-which include a great recipe for chocolate brownies-and they're sure to enjoy the mildly amusing featurette: "Making of An Important Movie." In Hot Shots! Part Deux, Charlie Sheen's Topper Harley tells lost-love Ramada (portrayed again by the ravishing Valeria Golino), "I never thought I'd see you again." Her response: "I had to come back, it's the sequel." Indeed, Jim Abrahams' 1993 Rambo-inspired burlesque follow-up is more timely than its predecessor with its hilarious humiliations of a Saddam Hussein-like character. Some of this is still funny too much of it, however, is not (Lloyd Bridges is a washout as a bumbling, addled commander). ![]() Featuring the comedically challenged Charlie Sheen as cocksure daredevil pilot Topper Harley, Cary Elwes as his vain nemesis, and Valeria Golino as the va-va-voom psychologist, Hot Shots!'s stock characters also include a good-hearted family man tellingly nicknamed "Dead Meat." When not taking potshots at Top Gun, the film references Dances with Wolves, Michelle Pfeiffer's piano-writhing in The Fabulous Baker Boys and the food-tasting bit from 9½ Weeks. ![]() The 1991 Top Gun spoof Hot Shots! had the advantage of being co-directed and co-written by Airplane!'s pilot Jim Abrahams. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |