Hot Shots! Part Deux

Topper Harley (Charlie Sheen) has once again left the military and has joined a monastery of monks. Then he gets a visit from Col. Denton Walters (Richard Crenna) who wants him to go with him and rescue the men who went in to rescue the men who were taken as war-prisoners by Iraq in Operation Desert Storm. He shuts him down, but when that team also gets captured the President of the United States, Thomas "Tug" Benson (Lloyd Bridges), and his CIA advisor Michelle Huddleston (Brenda Bakke) finally gets Topper to agree to come.

The "best of what's left" team led by Topper travels to the Persian Gulf where he runs into his old love Ramada (Valeria Golino). Together they have to carry out "Operation Secret Mission to bring Col. Walters and our boys back home" in the only way Topper knows how, by killing a lot of people...


Hot Shots! Part Deux is one of my absolute favorite comedies. It's the sequel to Top Gun parody Hot Shots! and this time it spoofs almost every action movie ever made. With references to and parodies of everything from Apocalypse Now! to Star Wars it's a silly and hilarious ride all the way through.

The film is in fact peppered with so many jokes that it's impossible to catch everything at the first viewing and it makes it just as fun to watch again later. There's a multitude of new jokes and references that I've discovered as I've watched it again and again through the years. There are also many funny references to other movies that you'll miss unless you know where it's from. For instance it wasn't until a little while ago that I saw Apocalypse Now! so the sequence where Topper's inner monologue gets cut off by that of Capt. Willard, played by Charlie Sheens father Martin, as their patrol boats pass each other went over my head earlier, but now it's one of the funniest scenes in the movie.

The main parody is of Rambo 2, which I've only seen once, and it borrows quite a bit of story points from that one, but Hot Shots! Part Deux is so widespread in its parodies and references than the first one was that it doesn't really matter if you've seen it at all. It's more of a spoof of the general action movies and everyone's seen at least a few of those, of course the more you've seen the more jokes you'll get.

The main part of the movie builds towards the last half hours awesome showdown in Iraq, which for some inexplicable reason has a jungle environment, and it's here it really shines. From the river sequence where Topper Harley takes out an Iraqi gunboat and its crew with a machine gun using so many bullets that the weight of their casings sinks his own boat to the prison camp fighting, complete with a body counter running in the lower corner declaring the movie to be "the Bloodiest movie ever!" and on the line of great jokes just don't stop. Then, of course, there's the final climax of seeing the President take on Saddam Hussein in a lightsaber duel to really put you over the edge so that you end up rolling on the floor in an uncontrollable laugh.


The cast of Hot Shots! Part Deux consist of mainly the same actors as the last one, but with a few additions. Charlie Sheen is still great as Topper Harley, who this time is turned into the ultimate action hero, and really gets to show off his comedic talent. Valeria Golino returns too as Topper's former girlfriend Ramada and she gets to be a bit more sillier this time around instead of mostly being the token "sexy lady" of the film, like she mostly was in the first. That part has been handed on to Brenda Bakke who definitely fits that description, however she doesn't get too much else to do. Another new addition is Richard Crenna who spoofs his own role from the Rambo movies as the Colonel and he does a great job with it, taking the over the top "seriousness" he had in that to a just slightly higher level making it hilarious. Jerry Haleva does a good job too as Saddam Hussein and Rowan Atkinson's cameo as Dexter Hayman is just brilliant.

All the acting is of course completely over the top most of the time, but once again Lloyd Bridges manages to outdo them all and completely steal the show in every scene he's in. His eccentric President who's had most of his body parts replaced is just unforgettable. With a pencil sharpener in his ear, asbestos skin and a dog's tongue he provides some of the movies biggest laughs and the scene where he knocks out five ex-Presidents with a shovel is a slap-stick comedy classic.

Overall Hot Shots! Part Deux is bigger, better and most importantly much funnier than the first one. Everything is taken to new levels of hilarity and silliness. I guess it can be a bit too much for some as the movie skips very closely along the thin line between silliness and stupidity, but the amount of laugh out loud moments in this outnumbers every other movie out there for me. Allround a fantastic comedy.

9 / 10