Hot Shots!/Hot Shots! Part Deux

Watching Hot Shots! again makes me think about how effectively they skewered more than just Top Gun. Twice.

Yeah, most of the sight gags are weak — the opening sequence on the aircraft carrier has a guy doing semaphore ballet, another guy roasting a hot dog by a jet exhaust, and of course some guy falls off while catching a football. In the modern parlance, we call this "weak sauce."

But at least Lloyd Bridges gets to do his schtick again for two films. His work in Airplane! is top notch, and he picks right up here and knocks it out of the park. The guy does not have a flat joke in either film.

Idle thoughts: Why do people keep sitting on small dogs?

Whoa, Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer worked together before "Two and a Half Men"?

Jim Abrahams has written and directed three comedies featuring airplanes..? Add his involvement with the Naked Gun films, plus Top Secret! and The Kentucky Fried Movie and you have one of the most successful and prolific comedic minds of the late 20th century.

I use the "blow it all on hats" joke just about every time the wife and I talk about money. I'd forgotten where I stole that joke until tonight. Here's a movie that came out before I finished high school, and I'm still using that joke in semi-daily conversation.

This is my life. I'm not proud.

Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux are just a couple more examples of the kinds of films I grew up watching and for which I still have a soft spot despite some pretty major gripes, which I'll get to in a moment.

My siblings and I probably watched this a half dozen times when we were growing up, and a few more times on television. Funny thing, though — I don't feel nostalgia in quite the same way as with many other films, and here's why:

Remember when killing Saddam Hussein was a wishful joke in silly movies? Google sort of takes the air out of those jokes now, you know? Evil tyrant, mass murderer, horrible human being, yes. And now if you want, you can go on Google video and watch him die.

So, can I laugh now when Topper drops a bomb into Saddam's lap in the movie? (I guess so, because somehow he lives.) Or how about when they go to assassinate him in the sequel, and he speaks with a lisp?

I mean, I don't feel any pangs when Saddam hands The Dude his bowling shoes in that dream sequence in The Big Lebowski, but that's different — even tasteful.

The Hot Shots! films, released shortly after Gulf War I, are some pretty strong indicators of the lack of closure in western culture re: Saddam. They make Saddam out not so much as a brutal dictator as a bungling fool, stepping on rakes, tripping over dog beds, and running face first into a bug zapper. We couldn't get him then, so we settled for making him a joke. Humor is a great way to deal with pain.

For more than 10 years, that lack of closure festered and ultimately led to another war.

Both Hot Shots! films are a strong indicator of the mood of this country in the period between the two Persian Gulf Wars. Throw in a parade of jokes that are simply racist and ignorant and you have possibly one of the lowest points in American cinema, right?

Except I don't think it's that simple.

Consider, instead, that these films were made precisely to lampoon the jingoistic bullshit of films like Top Gun and Rambo: First Blood Part II (and III). Richard Crenna even shows up here, spoofing his own role in the Rambo movies!

I mean, an Iraqi torturer steps out of the shadows wearing a Holiday Inn towel on his head. You don't get a whole lot more racist than that. But is this more of a comment on what viewers think rather than what the filmmakers think?

The filmmakers uniformly substitute obscure words and mumbled names of famous people as foreign language. "Kareem of onion! Al Jarreau!" "Omar Sharif!" "Sufferin Succotash!" And if you're sharp-eared, you can catch it. If you just hear foreign language as so much gibberish, you won't even hear English. The filmmakers are testing you.

There's just so much legitimately brilliant comedy here that I can't get upset no matter how badly I want to decry this film as racist or ignorant. I can't get self-righteous about them. I can see these films as equal opportunity offenders.

Ryan Stiles, who plays a demolition expert and seems like an early, much milder draft of the character Danny McBride plays in Tropic Thunder, really nails it:

"Know what I'm gonna do if we make it? I'm gonna go back to Eagle River and marry my gal, Edith Mae. Gonna get us a nice little place with a white picket fence. You know the kind. Two-car garage. Maybe a fishing boat. And in 15 years, when they're all paid for... I'll set my charges and blow the shit out of them."

The more I ponder that quote, the more I feel that those words are a microcosm of what makes the Hot Shots! films brilliant parodies of American culture, not just Top Gun. (Read a certain way, Top Gun is a brilliant parody of American culture.)

Also consider Miguel Ferrer's line, "Thank you, Topper. I can kill again. You've given me a reason to live." Later, he has another great moment, smiling and mugging for the camera before saying, "War: It's fantastic!"

Both Hot Shots! films are a comment on the American dream and our insatiable thirst for violence, and not just in film. There's even a video game counter at the bottom of the screen in Act III, tallying the death toll and declaring this the bloodiest film ever. Do we not keep a death toll during times of war?

Nothing is safe from parody here — even the audience's world view. They even take a shot at Apocalypse Now, throwing in Martin Sheen for a cameo, and turning Iraq into Vietnam, just with Iraqis this time. For so many Americans, what's the difference?