X
- 1991
- PG-13
- Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
- 1 h 24 m
- 1991
- PG-13
- Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
- 1 h 24 m
Summary A parody of Top Gun in which a talented but unstable fighter pilot must overcome the ghosts of his father and save a mission sabotaged by greedy weapons manufacturers.
Directed By: Jim Abrahams
Written By: Jim Abrahams, Pat Proft
- 1991
- PG-13
- Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
- 1 h 24 m
- 1991
- PG-13
- Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
- 1 h 24 m
Hot Shots!
61
6.9
Where to Watch
Coming Soon
Not available in your country?
ExpressVPN
Get 3 Extra months free
$6.67/mth
Summary A parody of Top Gun in which a talented but unstable fighter pilot must overcome the ghosts of his father and save a mission sabotaged by greedy weapons manufacturers.
Directed By: Jim Abrahams
Written By: Jim Abrahams, Pat Proft
Where to Watch
Coming Soon
Not available in your country?
ExpressVPN
Get 3 Extra months free
$6.67/mth
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 18 Critic Reviews
61
56% Positive
10 Reviews
10 Reviews
33% Mixed
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
11% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 18 Critic Reviews
61
56% Positive
10 Reviews
10 Reviews
33% Mixed
6 Reviews
6 Reviews
11% Negative
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
Jun 29, 2017
It starts with a flyboy roasting franks in the exhaust of a combat jet and never lets up, giddily puncturing all those wartime flying hero movies and throwing in a heap of movie parodies besides. Either way, the pacing is jetstreamed and the level of inventiveness is sky-high. [31 July 1991, p.25]
Jun 29, 2017
WHEN you go to see a film by those wild and crazy filmmakers who brought
you Airplane!, Police Squad!, The Naked Gun and The Naked Gun 2, you
pretty much know what you're going to get: puns visual and spoken, sight
gags and pratfalls, parodies of other films and mockery of film
conventions. It's just a question of how well they do it this time, and in
Hot Shots!, which opens today in theatres across Canada, the answer is:
not bad, not bad at all. The plot is the usual silly trifle, but the
actors are good and the production is slick.[31 July 1991]
By H.J. Kirchhoff
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 60 User Ratings
6.9
68% Positive
41 Ratings
41 Ratings
23% Mixed
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
8% Negative
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 60 User Ratings
6.9
68% Positive
41 Ratings
41 Ratings
23% Mixed
14 Ratings
14 Ratings
8% Negative
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
Nov 27, 2021
Classic comedy movie full of gags on popular other movies. Lloyd Bridges as Admiral Benson is legendary
Report
Jun 6, 2022
A movie Masterpiece. There are almost no comparable action movies. The tension and strategic approach of the director enables a complete immersion into a realistic and scary war scenario.
JK genius jokes and best dark comments ever.
Report
Jun 29, 2017
Hot Shots! is very sharp and very funny, and if it doesn't have the aggressive, anarchic edge of "Airplane!" (attitude seems to be the specialty of David Zucker, who has just released "The Naked Gun 2 1/2 "), it is consistently, almost exhaustingly hilarious.
Jun 29, 2017
The only trouble with all these parodies is that Hot Shots begins to seem chaotic rather than clever. Too many of the send-ups turn out to be unnecessary detours. [31 July 1991, p.E5]
Jun 29, 2017
While the slapstick comedy antics are frequently amusing and, on rare occasions, even hilarious, HOT SHOTS!, like so many other cinematic parodies before it, tends to lose sight--or control--of the plot, such as it is, in favor of more jokes, more visual gags and more dialogue puns--all hurled at the audience at a rapid-fire pace.
By Staff (Not Credited)
FULL REVIEW
Jun 29, 2017
Unfortunately, the film begins to fall apart when it leaves film parody and strays too close to reality. This film is so timely, it has the young pilots flying a bombing run on Saddam Hussein's nuclear plant. Either these filmmakers were lucky, or they made it last week. It almost seems as if the latter is true, because Hot Shots handling of Middle Eastern bad guys is just a little too heavy handed -- no, make that insulting and insensitive.
Jun 29, 2017
The main difference between Naked Gun 2 1/2 and Hot Shots! is that almost half the jokes in Naked Gun 2 1/2 were at least slightly funny while in Hot Shots! less than a fifth are any good at all. [2 Aug 1991, p.C5]
Jun 26, 2021
In my childhood this was a must see movie and universally loved in my age group. However I must say it does not hold up to my nostalgia influenced memories anymore. Clarification: It is of cause not garbage and has good humor. It is more that I do not lean to a 9-10/10 anymore. It is a (slapstic) comedy and largely a parody of Top Gun with spoofs of many other movies like Superman, Rocky or Gone with the Wind to name a few. I do not know it the term “Spoof movie” did exist back then (If it did I did not knew it). It is a well remembered role for Charlie Sheen and is liked for its humor, style and ideas for its jokes. Story: It is the story of former top pilot Topper Harley (Not a typo;-) who has retired to a native America reservation and is persuaded to return to active duty as US pilot for a top secret mission called Sleepy Weasel (Also no typo;-). However he carries a lot of baggage with him and there is more to the mission than it seems as different interests collide. Like I said it is a good parody of Top Gun and the story is well done to be a vehicle for the humor. Humor: You already can guess the style of the humor by the names in the story set up. The humor works well and it is entertaining. It reaches not the top levels of the better spoof movies like “Spaceballs” or “The Naked Gun” movies but it is definitely good. Actors: Charlie Sheen is an excellent Topper Harley. It is a well recognized role and he fully delivers. He has the Leslie Nielsen power of delivering a serious performance in hilariously funny situation. Most memorable is Lloyd Bridges as Admiral Benson. Smaller role but hilariously entertaining in a positive way. Both he and Charlie Sheen became a staple of the movie and sequel. Valeria Gollino delivers a good performance as Ramada Thomson and is a great asset in her role. Cary Elwes as Kent Gregory is a good rival for Topper. Jon Cryer and William O’Leary are good comic relive characters. Finally I want to praise Jerry Haleva for the shortest role I ever find remarkable in a movie ;-). I say we got a fitting cast with an overall good performance by genre standards. Visually the movie looks good and catches the feeling of the source movies it spoofs. Overall I see this as a nostalgic movie I enjoyed as child. It does not hold up anymore to my memories but I say it is still good, entertaining and still worth watching.
Report
Aug 26, 2025
Top Gun gets a belated parody treatment, five years after the fact, from the writer of Airplane!, Top Secret! and The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!, Jim Abrahams. Later, he’d also direct Mafia! What can I say, the man likes a good exclamation point. With Charlie Sheen and Cary Elwes in the primary roles of not-Maverick and not-Iceman, plus colorful supporting parts for Lloyd Bridges and Jon Cryer, the cast is pretty well funded. These guys happily lean into the film’s status as a shameless joke farm, one with zero sense of tact or humility, but it sure feels like they all know they’re slumming. Not that Airplane! was highbrow entertainment, but it does seem Abrahams and company’s standards have lowered in the ensuing decade. Truly, no stone is left unturned in this quest to take the fullest possible amount of piss.
Those throw-everything-at-the-wall comic stylings aren’t without merit. The Hot Shots! brand of humor may be forced and primitive, but I still found plenty to laugh at. Primarily Sheen’s fierce determination to deliver line after line of insanely crude dialogue with a stone cold bad boy scowl. Bridges is great, too, working a further-inflated variation of the frazzled, brain-dead commander role he embodied in Airplane!, this time in military colors. Beyond that, expect plenty of basic sight gags, dollar store puns and forced plot beats. While most simple comedies consider the story to be a secondary concern, in this case it might be fifth or sixth in the pecking order; it merely exists to carry us on to the next cheap set of props and punchlines. And even then, only after both barrels have been well and truly emptied.
Having said all that, it does hold up better than I remembered. I winced when the family asked me to put this on for movie night, then surprised myself by snorting on a pretty regular basis. The good bits are still funny, but its enthusiasm for laying crosshairs on the easiest possible target is excessive at best. It’s like a PG-13 Looney Tunes in the skies above Iraq.
Report
Apr 26, 2023
To stupid and to dumb to laugh with or at. This spoof parody of the Top Gun era doesn't really work for me. The Admiral is a fun character the rest so not fun.
Report
Nov 25, 2024
Un film comique américain. Un film « comique » (?!?) « a-mé-ri-cain » ??… il est important ici, il est vital de ne pas oublier les guillemets parce que sinon, c’est la division par zéro et l’implosion sub-atomique du caberlot…!
Donc, un film « comique » américain, à savoir (donc) un film de golios avec des golios dedans !… et un humour (?) de fond de poubelle. Plus on tente de regarder ce festival d’idioties scatologiques arriérées, plus on atteint -rapidement- le quotient intellectuel trisonégatif du spectateur, c’est-à-dire de la gelée dans un bocal !
C'est une daube de débilité à éviter absolument, pour le bien de la planète !
Report