Shots of heat

I mentioned not too long ago that I just coincidentally happened to watch several aviation-themed movies in quick succession. Among them was Hot Shots!.

There's supposedly a plot here, but since this is a spoof of a bunch of other movies, the plot isn't quite so important. Charlie Sheen, before he went really crazy, plays Topper Harley, a retired Navy fighter pilot. Twenty years earlier, Topper's father Buzz was doing sokme flight training, and his cavalier attitude resulted in him and his co-pilot being forced to ditch the plane. Buzz survived, but not the other guy.

Topper has since gone native, spoofing Dances With Wolves, but the military needs him again. Lt. Cmdr. Block wants him for the testing of a new aircraft. But what Topper doesn't know is that there are powerful forces who want this experiment to fail because they've got a new aircraft of their own. That faction is led by Wilson (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.), and they've made certain Topper comes back precisely so this test will fail.

Along the way, Topper meets a bunch of tropes. One is the beautiful lady, Ramada (Valeria Golino), whom he meets doing horse-riding stunts before he finds that she's a psychiatrist and will be his psychiatrist in the military. Of course, they fall in love, and there's a love triangle to boot.

There's also the incompetent admiral who should have been pensioned off long ago, Adm. Benson (Lloyd Bridges), as well as Kent (Cary Elwes), a pilot who it turns out just happens to be the son of the guy that Topper's father got killed those 20 years ago. Eventually, the big test requires all of them to go off to the Mediterranean and destroy an alleged nuclear weapons facility in what is probably supposed to be Libya although I don't think they actually mention the country.

But of course as I said this is a spoof, so the reason to watch it is for both the references to other movies, as well as all of the sight gags. In that respect, Hot Shots! largely works, more so if you remember the things that it's spoofing. The acting isn't much, but of course you don't expect that from Charlie Sheen; Lloyd Bridges is probably best playing what is similar to Robert Stack's character from Airplane!.

Hot Shots! isn't quite as fun in my opinion as I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, but it's definitely worth a watch. It got a sequel, and the two did get a DVD release together which seems to be available on the TCM Shop. Hot Shots is also available on Amazon prime streaming.