HOT SHOTS! (1991) ** I think Mel Brooks ruined us on this kind of film-this modern day parody-by so often ( Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs ) making them qualitatively superior to the original. Which does tend to give satire that extra ooompf and credibility, you have to admit. So here the target would seem to be Top Gun -a fine film in its own right but hardly unsurpassable, and so I admit to wasting some energy wondering why they don't. This is relentless, clever absurdities cascading over one another like waves generated from an undulating and spastic wave machine on meth, but only the one about Lloyd Bridges' hat was enough to project the spasms in to my own diaphragm. Charlie Sheen and Valeria Golino are good actors for this sort of thing, and their take on Nine 1/2 Weeks may have lacked something of the original, but that must include some element of embarrassment. Actually, this spoof may have trumped the original in terms of reflection of actual real-world subject matter; from hanging around the navy for a few years it did seem more like this than the glossier elements of Top Gun but the damnedest thing is...what with all the hoopla and absurdities surrounding them in this one....the matadors and flying footballs and such...there's no disguising the majestic presence and pertinence of small jets that can take off from aircraft carriers.
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