Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993)
Just Deux it.
We did the first one last week, and I talked up the second as being one I enjoyed more, so it’s only fair we do it this week. The crew was back in town and nobody can say no to a good comedy so it was a pretty easy shoe in. Ramp up the antics, change the movie target focus, and go bust some heads - you got to set your goals high! Get back in the saddle and avoid weaponized chickens, tonight we hit Hot Shots! Part Duex.
Our story her has moments that rely a little on the first movie, but it’s honestly stuff that you can pick up just by watching this one, so let’s get that out of the way first so you don’t worry about it. Here, a special team is being sent in to rescue a bunch of captives from the middle east - with a bonus secret mission to kill the evil leader of the place. As you might have guessed, it goes wrong and that team indeed gets captured. Turns out there must be a mole on the side of the good guys side, but this does make the second team to go in to get a team that’s been captured, so it’s a big loop at this point. Anyways, as “pad our chances” kind of situation, they decide to call in an old master - our main character from the last movie - to go in with the general and get our people out. Well, he turns it down, the general goes in and gets captured, and then our hero has a change of heart and has to go in with a new team to get everyone who went in to get everyone who went in to get everyone who was caught out.
The actors here all do a good job. It feelks like people where probably having a blast while making this given how fun the movie feels, but I guess you never really know that part unless you were there. They ham it up a lot, intentionally, so I do suppose if that’s not your thing you might not feel like people are really nailing it. Nothing here ever really feels like it’s done out of purpose and it’s all deliberate and keyed to the way comedy was at that time. Even some of the background characters get in on it, and there’s plenty of stuff to see people doing in various moments regardless of it it’s a main actor or not.
Character wise you won’t really get too much if you are looking for depth. It plays parody to the second Rambo movie, and many of those beats show up to give our main a little advancement from where he is at the start. The inclusion of him and the female lead from the first does allow some more twists and turns with their chemistry, but for the most part everything else could largely be chalked up to funny caricatures of what’s intended. It’s fine - like I said last movie, it’s okay for a comedy to not have super depth with it’s characters if the point is to have a good laugh, it just serve’s as a nice bonus whipped cream topping is all. In a movie like this, the movie basically is a character - in that sense that you’d call someone wacky a character.
Zap-a-villain would be a great brand name.
The jokes in this one are same as always - if it fits your humor it’s gonna be on point, if it’s not then you won’t enjoy it as much. Humor is subjective, can’t really help that you know? Still, this one did give me something I was waiting for - a fart joke! Again, perhaps too low brow for some, but perfect for me. We get a bunch of different movie-related jokes as well, such as dunking fists in candy, lightsaber fights, terminator liquid metal, and a body count counter that pops up. It’s got a bunch of physical slap stick stuff in here, so fans of that will be right at home - and it also has some fun with words here and there as well. It might not be the best comedy to ever exist, but it certainly shows that it understands what it takes to make and execute on a bunch of different types of comedy, including the unexpected.
Costumes are fitting of the stuff that’s getting riffed on, although also largely nothing too fancy. In most cases you won’t really be drawn to them standing out, although a good few tiems they are used for jokes and it works pretty darn well. It might not all fly with a modern audience that’s hyper-critical or sensitive about some stuff, much like the original had a few moments of that sort of thing, but I don’t really get the feeling it was really done with a mean spirit intended. Most the costumes meant to reference something are pretty obvious about their reference, and some little details (like a moveable mole) have a pretty decent amount of attention payed to them across the run time. Tje settings also end up feeling pretty varied, so it has plenty of sections that feel rather visually unique within the movie to make you feel like you are traveling across distances and places.
The props all look great, with perhaps the lowest-quality one being the obviously fake chicken-arrow. It’s still a fun moment, but it won’t convince anyone. They of course tie in a lot to the humor of the movie, but the effects that go along with the props also all look pretty good. It’s finely done - and yes, like some of the jokes may have aged, so has some of the effects but coming from a guy whose seen far far worse, they are pretty darn good. Audio is well balanced, hearing lines is never really a problem - unless maybe you are laughing to hard at something. Music is there, and at times will have those little feelings of what it’s riffing on, be it a movie theme or otherwise. I could go into the thoughtful stuff in the movie, but I wasn’t really paying attention to all of that - so I’ll just have to wing the commentary part and say it’s making fun of the macho action movies and that sort of attitude - not really in a “you should feel bad” way like modern stuff would, but in that “we are all laughing” kind of way. Yeah, we’ll just stick with that.
The gummies for extra sugar damage.
So there you have it - another fun romp in the comedy of yesteryear. Not like, super farts dust old yesteryear, but still back from the 90s. Comedy is one of those things where for as much as it changes and evolves, so much of it stays the same that you could probably pick a comedy from any era and still find something to laugh at. This one is put together well, and does a number on picking fun at a couple of good action flicks that those who’ve seen them will probably get extra mileage out of the laughs involved. If you watched the first and thought it was good, you may enjoy this one better - unless of course you liked the first one for how Top Gun it was, in which case you might like that one more.