Hot Shots!

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hot Shots!

Directed by	Jim Abrahams
Produced by	Bill Badalato Pat Proft
Written by	Jim Abrahams Pat Proft
Starring	Charlie Sheen Cary Elwes Valeria Golino Lloyd Bridges Jon Cryer Kevin Dunn Bill Irwin
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	July 31, 1991
Running time	84 min.
Language	English
Followed by	Hot Shots! Part Deux
IMDb profile

Hot Shots! is a 1991 comedy spoof which starred Charlie Sheen, Cary Elwes, Valeria Golino, Lloyd Bridges, Jon Cryer, Kevin Dunn, and Bill Irwin. It was directed by Jim Abrahams, co-director of Airplane!, and was written by Abrahams and Pat Proft.

1 Plot summary
2 Trivia
3 List of movies spoofed
4 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Hot Shots has been described as "Top Gun meets Airplane!". The film begins at Flemner Air Base 20 years ago. A pilot named Buzz Harley loses control of his plane and ejects, leaving his co-pilot Dominic Mailman (Ryan Stiles) to crash; although Mailman survives the crash, his seat then ejects. After he parachutes to the ground, Mailman is mistaken for a deer owing to the branches stuck to his helmet and is shot by a hunter. Topper Harley (Charlie Sheen) wakes up from a nightmare he has about this event when a Lieutenant Commander (Kevin Dunn) asks him to return to active duty as a pilot in the U.S. Navy. He had previously left the Navy to live with Native Americans.

Harley becomes romantically involved with a woman named Ramada (Golino), as does another top gun pilot (Elwes) who hates Topper because of the loss of his father to Buzz Harley and believes Topper may do the same to him. Amidst the chaos, the owner of an aerospace firm is trying to sabotage the mission in order to make the current fighter jets look bad in hopes that the Navy will replace them with his German-made jets. However, Topper Harley successfully completes the mission to destroy a nuclear power plant despite his jet's malfunctioning armament.

The iconic scene in the movie depicts a Middle-Eastern dictator, who resembles Saddam Hussein, relaxing on a lounge chair beside a swimming pool and sipping a drink in a tall glass through a straw. Suddenly a bomb, nearly one metre in length, falls out of the sky and into his lap.

[edit] Trivia

The aircraft used in the movie are Folland Gnats.
Lloyd Bridges' character mentions that he took a bazooka round at "Little Big Horn" (before correcting himself that the incident actually took place in Okinawa). Bridges starred in a film adaptation of the Battle of Little Big Horn.
Italian version of the movie featured a bad translation, where most of the puns and jokes were lost or replaced by coarse ones. Over all, the "ten thousand pound thrust" was translated as "una spinta propulsiva di 10.000 sterline," misunderstanding the mass pound and pound sterling. Nevertheless, the film had good success at the box office.
Topper Harley's first name is Sean, as depicted on his name tag in Ramada's office, and later during the bar scene. The name "Topper Harley" comes from the 1960's Harley-Davidson motor scooter, the Harley Topper.