Drama is easy: play “How To Save A Life” by Lifehouse over a montage, and you’ll make everyone sad. Comedy, now that’s difficult.
Hollywood has backed away from comedies over the last decade because it was impossible to keep up with pop culture when what’s funny keeps changing every week, but a key part of getting a laugh is to turn yourself into the joke. Over 30 years ago, A-list megastar Charlie Sheen wasn’t afraid to look stupid, and the result was Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux, a pair of parodies aimed squarely at Top Gun and everyone else in Hollywood, ended up catching strays.
Charlie Sheen in Hot Shots!
Hot Shots! sends Sheen, as Sean “Topper” Harley back into active service to help train a new generation of pilots, while coping with his own PTSD and the recurring nightmare of his father, “Buzz” Topper, abandoning his copilot, “Mailman” Gregory (Ryan Stiles), to die at the hands of a hunter who mistakes the airman for a deer. 30 years before Top Gun: Maverick introduced Goose’s son, Rooster, in Hot Shots! Had Cary Elwes play Mailmain’s son, “Pirate” Gregory, who blames Topper for his father’s death through the transitive property. Describing the film’s plot doesn’t matter, because what is important is that the jokes, from wordplay to sight gags, are flying faster than you’ll be able to keep up.
Charlie Sheen spoofs the motorcycle riding scene from Top Gun
Charlie Sheen reenacts the famous motorcycle shot of Tom Cruise riding alongside a fighter jet, except the road is filled with speed bumps. The obligatory 90s love scene between Topper and his therapist turns into him cooking breakfast on her stomach. When “Dead Meat” is getting ready to go up for the final training mission, his wife is there for him to sign his life insurance forms, but he says he’ll do it when he gets back, and that whole global warming thing, well, he thought of a solution.
Hot Shots! is not subtle with its humor, and in 2025, it’s a relief that a film revels in being stupid from beginning to end in every scene. Two years later, Sheen was back with Hot Shots! Part Deux, this time Topper is sent into Iraq to rescue prisoners of war in an over-the-top parody of the Rambo franchise that includes a sword fight against Saddam Hussein. It lacks the joke-per-minute ratio of the original, but it’s filled to the brim with sight gags, and the first 15 minutes still contain more jokes than a modern comedy.
There’s even one record-setting moment where Charlie Sheen is taking on a battalion of Iraqi soldiers, and the on-screen counter keeps track of the body count, noting when it passes RoboCop and Total Recall. It’s a brutal mockery of Hollywood shootouts, including the same stuntman dying multiple times, and it’s impossible to imagine any of today’s action stars showing the willingness to look this stupid on purpose to get a laugh.
Both films were also hits at the box office, back when successful comedies hit theaters every few months, Hot Shots and Part Deux earned over $180 million and $130 million, respectively. If it wasn’t for the success of The Naked Gun legacy sequel with Liam Neeson, there would be nothing this decade that’s comparable to the brazen humor on display throughout the Hot Shots! films.
Valeria Golino and Charlie Sheen in Hot Shots!
If you want to relive what it was like when Hollywood knew how to take a joke, you can. Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux are both newly on Netflix.
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