Friday, April 18, 2014

HOT SHOTS! PART DEUX (1993)

The story this time is pretty much RAMBO III where Topper Harley (Charlie Sheen) is now a ripped Buddhist monk/stick fighter in Thailand.  A military Colonel Walters (played by Richard Crenna, who also played Colonel Trautman in RAMBO III) asks Topper to sneak into Iraq and save some POW's.  He initially refuses, but after Walters himself is taken prisoner at the same camp, Topper agrees to go in.  Along the way he runs into his old flame from the first film, Valeria Golino, but by now he's having a fling with a supersexy CIA operative Brenda Bakke.

Part Deux is, of course, directly related to the original HOT SHOTS!, but since they shifted gears away from TOP GUN and parody more on the Rambo franchise it feels really fresh with tons of new material to mine for jokes.  The humor is more absurd, the story broader, Charlie Sheen is probably the funniest he's ever been, Lloyd Bridges is hilarious, even Richard Crenna (who I've never thought of as a comedic actor) was surprisingly funny and the beautiful Brenda Bakke's presence didn't hurt anything...except the tensile strength of my pants in the crotchitoldal area!

As enjoyable as the first film is, I think Part Deux might be just a little bit better.  Just to be sure, I better go rewatch them both.

Part 1 - Hot Shots! (1991)