Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993)

User Rating:

6.2/10   

Director:

Jim Abrahams

Writers (WGA):

Jim Abrahams (characters) &
Pat Proft (characters) ...

Release Date:

21 May 1993 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Comedy | War

Tagline:

Just Deux it.

Plot:

"Rambo" parody in which Topper Harley leads a rescue team into Iraq to save Iraqi war prisoners and all of their previous rescue teams.

Plot Keywords:

President | Punched In The Face | Flashback | Fall Off Cliff | Martial Arts

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Charlie Sheen	...	Topper Harley
Lloyd Bridges	...	President Thomas 'Tug' Benson
Valeria Golino	...	Ramada Rodham Hayman
Richard Crenna	...	Col. Denton Walters
Brenda Bakke	...	Michelle Rodham Huddleston
Miguel Ferrer	...	Commander Arvid Harbinger
Rowan Atkinson	...	Dexter Hayman
Jerry Haleva	...	Saddam Hussein
David Wohl	...	Gerou
Mitch Ryan	...	Senator Gray Edwards (as Mitchell Ryan)
Michael Colyar	...	Williams
Ryan Stiles	...	Rabinowitz
Rosemary Johnston	...	Lavinia Rodham Benson
Ben Lemon	...	Team 2 Leader
Buck McDancer	...	Richard Nixon

Also Known As:

Hot Shots 2! The Exploitation (USA) (working title)
Hot Shots! 2 (Australia)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for sexual spoofs and language.

Runtime:

86 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Spain:18 | Iceland:12 (video rating) | Iceland:L | South Korea:15 | Brazil:Livre | UK:12 (original rating) (cut) | UK:PG (video rating) (1994) (cut) | Argentina:13 | Australia:M | Chile:14 | Finland:K-10 | Germany:12 | Singapore:M18 | Sweden:15 | USA:PG-13

Filming Locations:

Rancho Palos Verdes, California, USA

Company:

Sidley Wright & Associates

Trivia:

Body count: 114. (More than the combined body count of Robocop and Total Recall (see trivia for those movies) which it spoofed on the death tolls.)

Goofs:

Continuity: Topper gets shot in the arm, and you can see through his arm. When he talks to Ramada, the hole is gone.

Quotes:

Topper Harley: [dazed] That's right, Cindy. It's twenty three minutes past the hour, and now heres the Buckinghams with "Kind of a Drag"...
[Topper collapses]

Movie Connections:

Spoofs Lone Wolf McQuade (1983)

Soundtrack:

Theme

Exhilarating farce

Alright, this is a sequel and the frame is familiar, but it's still pretty funny and at times sidespittingly so.

I can't begin to list (or recognize) all of the allusions to other movies that provide the springboard for this parody. That doesn't really matter. The opening sequence in which Richard Crenna induces Martin Sheen to come out of retirement in a Harikrishna ashram is a little dull, but after that it's solid laughs.

Most of the jokes are silly and played in perfect deadpan. Example: an overly bemuscled Sheen, dressed in macho commando gear, steps off a helicopter at a remote jungle camp, accompanied by Brenda Bakke, a gorgeous long-haired woman in tight shorts who oozes sex from every pore. Miguel Ferrer, the camp commander, marches up to the two of them and demands to know, in his official voice, "Which of you is Michelle Huddleston"? Later a man is killed by a chicken shot from a bow.

There are so many gags packed into some scenes that it takes repeated viewings to notice them. During an intense combat scene, Sheen and Ferrer hide behind some packing crates and Ferrer begins to sob because he's lost his taste for killing. Sheen comforts him as you might comfort a child: "Hey, buddy boy, we're all entitled to a few mistakes." The exchange itself is quite funny, an insertion of pop psychology crap into a scene full of whizzing bullets and exploding mortar shells. But behind the pair, we can notice that one of the supply boxes is labeled "Spineless Jellyfish" and another "Yellowbellies." I think I'll quit with one more example, worthy of Woody Allan. Two bitchy women who used to be roommates are exchanging insults. One says: "I'll never forget what you wrote in my yearbook. 'Remember all the fun we had in speech class? And I'll **** up your life if it's the last thing I do'." None of the performances flop. How COULD they? You could drag some wino in off the street and have him stumbling around and retching these lines and he'd be funny. That said, I must admit that I enjoyed Loyd Bridge's performance the most. He's still the same character he was in "Hot Shots", a bionic man, but this time around he's the president and he really gets into the part. "Looks like this time the other hand is on the wrong foot." Well I don't want to get into what there is of a plot, and I don't want to give away any more of the gags. That leaves me pretty much with nothing more to say.

You'd need to be in the throes of a major affective disorder not to laugh out loud during this one.