(1991)
3.5
Brendon Hanley
Just as Airplane! made it impossible to take Airport and other disaster movies seriously, Hot Shots! will forever alter the way you view Top Gun. It's another successful parody from director Jim Abrahams, who gets in enough jokes and gags for a week-long festival of standard comedy films. It feels like a speedy derivative of The Marx Brothers at their most ludicrous, or Mad Magazine in motion pictures, and Mel Brooks' movie burlesques (Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, High Anxiety) are certainly close cousins. Abrahams' movies have a consistent style, and they create a surreal atmosphere in which anything might happen. The Hollywood in-jokes are a big part of the laughs, but the set-ups are so fantastic yet familiar that they come off like live-action comics.
Hot Shots! on AllMovie
Hot Shots! (1991)
