8. SWIMMING AGAINST THE CURRENT: Someone/something gets electrocuted and lives.
There was a time when Charlie Sheen was cool and not in a way that everyone was laughing at him. This would be then, and no matter what he does with his life, you need to say, “He was in Hot Shots!“
Directed by Jim Abrahams, co-writer and co-director of Airplane! and written by Abrahams and Pat Proft, Hot Shots! is a ZAZ movie of jokes, jokes and more jokes. If one joke doesn’t work, it’s fine. One joke will destroy you, and you’ll remember it forever.
Lieutenant Sean “Topper” Harley (Sheen) is a rebel. He’s also Tom Cruise from Top Gun. Despite being undependable and having a horrible father—Lieutenant Commander Leland “Buzz” Harley (Bill Irwin) —he’s a great pilot and is drafted into Operation Sleepy Weasel, commanded by Rear Admiral Thomas “Tug” Benson (Lloyd Bridges). And the son of the man his father killed, Lieutenant Kent “Pirate” Gregory (Cary Elwes), is his Iceman; Ramada Thompson (Valeria Golino) is their Charlie Blackwood, and the movie ends with Saddam Hussein getting a bomb dropped on him.
I mean, it has a fistfight between Charles Barkley and Bill Laimbeer, as well as a man surviving crashing his plane, only to be shot when someone thinks he’s a deer. And then someone gets electrocuted, and you see their skeleton. Of course, no joke in this is funnier than the one in Hot Shots! Part Deux, when Martin and Charlie Sheen recognize one another as actors in important Vietnam movies. I didn’t know what meta meant in 1993, but yeah. That’s an example.
One of my life rules is that if you meet someone and they think ZAZ comedies are just stupid, you should never be friends with them. This rule has never failed me.
