SPOOF: HOT SHOTS!, THE NAKED GUN 2 1/2: THE SMELL OF FEAR
When AIRPLANE! came out in 1980, it wasn't a revolutionary movie. After all, spoofing a genre, or a story, has probably been around as long as stories have. And particularly, movies had been doing spoofs, and popular ones, for a while (look, for example, at Dean Martin's Matt Helm films, which spoofed the spy genre). What brothers David and Jerry Zucker, and their friend Jim Abrahams (who later became known as ZAZ) did in their spoof movie was merely some refining. For one thing, they combined the spoofing of typical genre scenes (when an airline passenger is terrified, instead of speaking soothing words, the other passengers and crew line up to hit some sense into her) with spoofs of specific movie scenes (the SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER sequence), with some cultural humor thrown in (the two black passengers who speak jive, with English subtitles). Also, whereas many spoof movies (even ones by Mel Brooks, who had the most similar sense of humor) were pretty slow in gag content, AIRPLANE! went on the theory of "if you throw enough stuff against the wall, some of it will stick." This gag-a-minute approach also sometimes entailed having two or three gags in the same scene. Finally, instead of casting comedians or comic personalities, ZAZ went after actors who were best known for serious work, on the theory that audiences would laugh that much harder. The result was one of the funniest movies ever made.
ZAZ directed three movies together in all: AIRPLANE!, which spoofed disaster movies, TOP SECRET! (1984), which spoofed war films and Elvis movies, and RUTHLESS PEOPLE (1986), which is not a spoof at all, but a straight comedy. After that, they each went on to separate projects. Jerry Zucker directed GHOST (1990), which was more serious in tone, even though it contained some humor. Jim Abrahams and David Zucker, on the other hand, have continued to make spoofs, and each came out with their own in 1991: Abrahams' HOT SHOTS!, and Zucker's THE NAKED GUN 2 1/2: THE SMELL OF FEAR.
Abrahams' film is a wicked parody of TOP GUN and similar movies. Topper Harley (Charlie Sheen), like Tom Cruise's Maverick in that film, is a hotshot navy pilot who's obsessed with living up to his late father. For that reason, he has retired from flying, when Lt. Commander James Block (Kevin Dunn) calls him in to help them fly another mission. Of course, there's all kinds of problems. Fellow hotshot Kent Gregory (Cary Elwes) resents Topper. Someone is sabotaging the planes, and Block may be in league with them. And Topper is still obsessed with his dead father, despite the efforts of Ramada Thompson (Valeria Golino), a psychiatrist at the base.
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