Midweek Mention... Hot Shots

Hot Shots

Cris: The first thing you for a heart attack is you can't find your dick anymore.

Sidey: Hot, hot shots. Yeah. 1991.

Dan: Why not?

Sidey: We've mentioned this quite a few times in various probably top fives and stuff. Yeah. And I think always quite fondly remembered it but now we get the chance to go back and see it because I haven't seen

Dan: true? Yeah

Sidey: long time. So it was a chance to revisit it and see if it's stood the test of time.

Dan: time. So so this one obviously had a a sequel Hot shots part two, which I remember, really enjoying that one as well But this one I remembered less other than first

Sidey: Well, it's from the stable of like aeroplane and all that, isn't it? So it's and we watched Naked Gun. No, did we watch Naked Gun and

Reegs: Edward? No, we've just done

Sidey: was just aeroplane. I mean, we love that. Yeah. So, you know, hopes are

Dan: boded well. Well, Pete was shouting, wasn't he on the um on the

Sidey: he was

Dan: WhatsApp group. He was quite excited.

Sidey: It sets the

Reegs: from the writer of Police Academy as well, if that really, you know, so pedigree.

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah. It's all the ingredients are there and it's it sets the scene 20 years

Previous.

Dan: yeah, it begins as a pilot coming in.

Reegs: uh, Yeah,

Dan: Yeah Leyland Buzz Harley. He loses control of his plane.

And ejects out saves himself. But of course

Sidey: mailman.

Dan: He

gets, he gets mistakenly shot. Thinking he's a deer.

Sidey: Ryan Stiles, and when I was about 11, I thought he was probably the

Cris: you know Hunting season starts today.

Reegs: It's Ryan Stiles. And when I was about, whoa, 11, I thought he was probably the funniest human being in the whole world.

Dan: Yeah.

What was it have I got a line for you? I think he was on a lot

Reegs: whose line is it anyway? That one? Yeah,

something

Sidey: You just portmanteaued two shows. You just smashed them together. That was good. I like that. Yeah, and then we sort of cut back to present day where I think

Topper Harley has already been kicked out of the Navy

Reegs: Yeah, well he's, yeah, exactly. He's on a

Dan: He's our hero charlie sheen and yeah,

Sidey: Well, we get, it's just now, It's how many films can you

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: because I think we can probably say that we've had Top Gun

Cris: Oh

Sidey: and now we and now we've got Dancing with Wolves

Dan: And, and this is the entire film, it just kind of makes up lots of smaller little nods to other films vinaigrettes, yeah, loads of vinegar.

Cris: necessarily nods to it, it's more of a parody

Sidey: to Yes.

Cris: the other movies

Reegs: Some of it is as lazy as just a reference. Like, hi, remember this?

Dan: Yeah.

And it's got,

you know, I'm still laughing the way through this. I don't know how it started for you, but I was in quite a jovial mood when I put this on and this didn't harm it.

Sidey: Well it started off really optimistic and probably still at this point okay he's basically, for no reason told that they need him back

Dan: well he is like the hero, isn't it? Everybody's just gotta have topper, topper every, you know, could you get somebody

Cris: pilot in the world.

Dan: could do this and this, you know, fight against all these people, bring back some POWs that they've got

Reegs: In this one they've got a mission, Sleepy Weasel that they need to achieve and it's basically the plot of Top Gun Maverick where they have to go and bomb a facility and

Sidey: Top Gun Maverick rip this off?

Reegs: basically,

absolutely, yeah, Top Gun, yeah, ripped off Hot Shots because it's the same story, exiled Maverick flight guy comes back, overcomes obstacles and

Sidey: So he makes his way back and he sees the hot chick,

Reegs: Valerie Galena, I think her name is. She as well featured a lot in my childhoods.

yeah.

Sidey: See her

Cris: a horse

Dan: old are you when you're watching this first time around,

Reegs: not just this cause she had been in other like more arty movies. I wish I'd written them down, but yeah. Some other movies that I remembered Valerie Galena in and in this one she's introduced.

Dan: Man?

Reegs: Yeah. She was in that. in this one she's introduced sort of, it's I think an officer and a gentleman homage, isn't it?

Where

she, Yeah. Yeah.

She's doing tricks on a pony and then eventually doing like

Sidey: Olympic gymnasts. Yeah. Yeah. Uneven bars on the tree. Topper Harley copies them on his bike apart from that bit which he clearly can't do.

So there so he's he's smitten with her. Then we go into meet the meet the feebles and it's all that uh like. The Waste and Strays in the Battalion. The Blind Guy. That's hilarious. And the, like

Reegs: like That was John Cryer, who went on to be Charlie Sheen's really good mate in Two and a Half Men. The kid, if you ever watched Two and a Half Men, I am sad enough that I've seen more than one or two episodes.

Like, not loads, but I've seen them, so I know some of the characters. There's the half of the men in it. He went completely lunatic, didn't he? Charlie

Sidey: Charlie

Sheen probably gave him a nudge

Reegs: Yeah, that's true. He was also

Sidey: was a lunatic.

Reegs: what was he like in 1991? He wasn't

Sidey: he

was a bankable movie star. Yeah. Because he had this, he had what was the baseball one? He was wild

Reegs: A Major league.

Sidey: Major League. I had a few sequels other things that were good, probably.

Dan: was, he was on fire.

Cris: in Wall Street.

Reegs: Wall Street, yeah. I was trying to think what year Wall Street

Sidey: know, there was a time before he was a fucking maniac of like the highest order.

Reegs: Just like a proudly drug binging, like misogynist, like prostitute, porn star loving.

Dan: Yeah. He had a wild side. But he's still kind of working his way through different film plots in this and trying to raise a few gags along the way.

We've gone probably then halfway through the film.

Sidey: Well, the, the crux of the, the sort of drive of the, the, the friction within the team is that there's the other fella, the fucking Val Kilmer proxy who they butt heads. He fancies

Reegs: Carrie, what's his jobs from Princess Bride?

Sidey: Yeah they both like the girl. She does the Fabulous Baker Boys bit on the piano in the red dress.

She's smoking hot in that bit. And there's a myriad of other

Cris: And the Admiral is quite

Reegs: good.

Cris: Admiral Tug

Benson. He's good, I like

Sidey: Lloyd

Reegs: tried to get Leslie Nielsen to do it, and he said no, he

Sidey: It was, they tried to get Leslie Nielsen to do it, and he said no, he wouldn't work with the director again, but then did loads of other films with him. Yeah,

Reegs: Yeah. But Lloyd Bridges is masterful in this.

Sidey: he's good.

Dan: No, he's still to the scene. I mean, Topper is I'd say this macho action kind of larger than life figure. And he is just going now through the Top Gun phase. He needs to go through a testing phase of the, the planes at one point. And he's, he's flipping it upside down and inside out and turning the plane and everything.

And they're all kind of, amazed by his skills, but he takes a few classic. Maverick turns and things that

Reegs: Well, he flies above them and twats the wings on

Sidey: above them and twists the wings on the top. Yeah, Paula Abdul. She's talking about

Reegs: She's talking about a landlady and he's like, Oh, what about your landlady? She's like, all right, you can do her too.

Sidey: do her too. Yeah, and

Reegs: Yeah. And then they have the sex and she puts

Sidey: So that's the nine and a half weeks bit. It starts off with him feeding her some stuff and then it's cooking stuff on her abs.

Yeah. Apparently she did the olive thing for real. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where she catches it in

Dan: It catches it, yeah.

Reegs: flipped it up with her stomach,

Sidey: Yeah, not the egg or the bacon though.

Dan: Yeah. No. There's a full English going on in her stomach, isn't it?

He is like, he's holding up bacon and things, and it's sizzling.

Reegs: Yeah.

The crux of it is that there is a nefarious plan to sort of sabotage the fighter jets because the general believes that the Americans need better equipment.

So this I think that's explored in some other movies, this sort of theme of criticisms of the military industrial complex, but Yeah, that's about it. It's just to drive the plot forward, which is to have them need Topper Harley to lead the mission. Before that, you've got Deadmeat.

Is that his name?

He was probably my favorite character in the movie. He's marked for death the whole, you know, obviously he's called Deadmeat.

Sidey: called

Reegs: And you meet his Lovely wife, and you hear about his kids, I think, and he walks under a ladder, and a cat goes across his path, he breaks a mirror.

Dan: do you want to sign the life insurance? No I'll do that when I get

Reegs: Also, I've worked out who did JFK, it's fascinating, I'll tell you when I land.

Sidey: all in

Reegs: He does actually survive the hideous sequence of events that follow only to be killed by the ambulance. Oh no, they take him to the hospital, and they say something like, oh, He's been hit multiple times by the ambulance and this crash and all that and then they take him and he says, well, what can go wrong?

I'm going to the hospital and then smash cut to his funeral. So he's dead.

Cris: Well, no, the doctor, they push him with a doctor and the doctor's like, right, 10 milligrams of morphine and they

Reegs: they take it to the doctor. Yeah.

Cris: rather. It's like, is he going to be fine? Are you going to look after him? Yeah, he's in a hospital. What's the worst that can happen?

Reegs: Dead,

Dan: Lots of gags like

this

Cris: I, that made me laugh. And then funeral. The admiral starts shooting at after they salute the flag. He starts shooting at them

Sidey: Main mission is to blow up an iraqi nuclear power

Dan: and top has been having problems related to his father,

Sidey: he's been carrying around the guilt of his father being reckless and causing the death of mailman

Dan: And we get to hear that actually that's not the case. One of the other army captains that was out there with his father said he'd been carrying this for 20 years. He was a hero Topper. Now you can be too, giving Topper the confidence to knock out all the Iraqi fighters.

Reegs: Yeah, they're called stuff like falafel and

Sidey: Kebab

yeah

Reegs: Which he does and he drops a bomb on Saddam Hussein who catches it, but he survives to live for the sequel,

Dan: sequel. Well, what he actually does, he has his guns are jammed, aren't they? And he has to lead two missiles that are chasing him into

Reegs: it's quite a maneuver.

Sidey: It's quite

Dan: a manoeuvre, only Topper could do it. There's a big explosion, his plane comes through and it's, it's kind of got no wings.

It's just a cockpit by the time it arrives back on this big, kind of floating

Cris: It's a

Dan: Boat kind of carrier jet thing. Yeah. And he's a hero. Yeah. Top has brought it home.

and then they have that mo the top gun moment where they're going, you can be my wing man. No, you can be whatever. And they're, they're just like,

Reegs: He wants to

Dan: each other.

Answer

Reegs: Answer one question, What is a chafing dish? Yeah. And then, because he mistakenly thinks that Kent and Ramada, I think her name

Sidey: is yeah

Are

Reegs: are doing it but they're not and he fucks off back to the reservation where she's waiting for him wearing his

Sidey: his bunny slippers. Bunny

Reegs: slippers yeah and

Cris: she's got a new name.

Reegs: yeah

Cris: sizzling belly or something

Reegs: sizzling belly yeah and he has his father's eyes and that's the end of the movie i think

elvis i think looks at you

Dan: There's a few outtake bits. So, longer. Better shorter worse than you expected. Where are you going?

Sidey: so much worse. It's so disappointing when I watched it. I was like, man, this is shit. So obviously you have to compare it to why is stuff like aeroplanes still funny? Why do I still really like naked gun? Why did this not work for me?

Almost everything in this is just visual gags. Whereas the writing and those other ones is so much cleverer. It's still slapstick and silly. Yeah. But like I saw a clip the other day and Priscilla Precious walked along and she's giving a description somewhere, it's like six foot three, moustache, that's an enormous moustache, which is way funnier than anything in this film.

The only thing that made me laugh in this was the running joke about sitting on the chihuahua,

Reegs: Yeah, I quite enjoyed that joke.

Sidey: I was just like, man, this is painful.

Reegs: was a slog, eh? Even at 86 minutes. I think it's because it was, like, that reference y type humour more than,

Sidey: it did

Reegs: yeah, it did a

Dan: Well it, it was, for me it had some jokes that hit. I liked the beginning, I thought this was, it was doing okay, but there was a, a longer middle section where, yeah, it was,

It

wasn't that laugh a minute

Sidey: It looked

fairly cheap at times the jokes just, I don't know, you know, 1991 was probably around the last time I saw it, and I would have been 11, 12,

Reegs: Yeah, and you loved

Sidey: it worked perfectly then, but I'm fucking 45 now, and it just

doesn't.

Dan: lot of the references and things were pretty good. Been a lot easier to connect to back then than they are now

Reegs: I tell you what, mercifully, like for a comedy from the 90s, there's not, there's not a lot of over homophobia, sexism, really, there's a running gag. It's not even a lot of racism, really, in this one. I mean, that bit, yeah, but that I think is more making a point about how faceless they are in the, like, they're just made up nation in the, in the But yeah, not a lot of the humor had aged, like, from a, from that perspective a lot.

You weren't cringing at it like you can from other 90s comedies where there's like a lot of, you know, homophobia and other stuff going on. So,

Dan: so.

Yeah, from that point of view, it's probably a little more politically correct

Sidey: Had you seen it before, Chris?

Cris: I have, yeah, I really loved it when I first seen it. It was, honestly, I was on the floor. I still enjoyed it this time. It's not too long, it's got, and for me, because English is not my first language, If it's too witty, if some of the jokes are too funny or too, too well thought I miss it because I don't understand the reference.

So for me with these ones, or when the guy puts the, you know, the scarf in his ear and all these kind of, it's like, Oh yeah, that's some of them were really funny. I still kind of found myself laughing and he's like, Oh, what happened to you? I thought I saw Elvis. Oh, forget about it. The King is dead. And I don't know, for me, that, that was still funny because

Reegs: I

didn't not chuckle but it just was

Cris: It

was still, and I agree with you, we've seen some, some comedies from late eighties, nineties, even late nineties, where you think

Sidey: wouldn't say that now, yeah.

You wouldn't

Cris: say that five years ago, let alone now.

But so again, I enjoyed it. I like all the actors, everybody was good, the plot. And you know, that is going to be a parody of a lot of movies. So I still enjoyed it. It was, for me, it was

Reegs: actually manages to look impressively enough I don't know what his budget was or anything But impressively

Sidey: 26 million.

Reegs: all right It had the second unit guys from top gun did do the

Sidey: Right, okay.

Reegs: for some of this where it

Sidey: you want to know what the planes they used were?

Reegs: They were gnats weren't they something gnats.

Sidey: Yeah Fowland FO 145 Nats British fighter trainers used by the Red Arrows up until 1979 and the enemies were flying Northrop T 38 Talon twin jet trainer aircraft.

Reegs: Wow and a guy actually unfortunately died in the making of this movie flying inverted the the

Sidey: the funniest bit of it.

Reegs: They didn't show the footage.

Michael bay would have done.

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: Well, no, I, as I say, I thought it started well. I thought there was definitely some, some Good strong chuckles and gags along the way It did have a middle section where I was thinking I haven't laughed for about 15 minutes here And that can be feel a lot longer But yeah, I I would You know, as, as Chris said, I, I think it's really a nice, easy one to follow.

It's got a few gags. It's not too long. 84 minutes. Hot shots part there.

Reegs: That's

the one that I remember the funnier gags from,

Cris: me I would like, I would

the Rambo, yeah. And the one with the

Reegs: Ryan Stiles is in

Cris: mole from this side to that side. There's a few,

Reegs: bit where he's like putting his knuckles in the pick and mix

Cris: Yes, yeah, and it's all the candies and, yeah.

Reegs: yeah,

yeah.

Cris: they're there for a reason, they're still good, they still hold

up.

Reegs: Well, Maybe

it does, maybe it doesn't. We'll find out, I guess, when we

Sidey: watch it

Reegs: watch it for the pod. Definitely. 'cause it was a chore to talk about really,

Sidey: Yeah, strong recommend, though.

Cris: Yes, yeah, yeah, definitely.