Hot Shots! - 1991

"Hot Shots!" - 1991
Dir. by Jim Abrahams - 1 hr. 24 min.

Original Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I probably haven't watched "Hot Shots!" in something like twenty years, but this is exactly the kind of film that teenager me was excited about.  Sure, "Batman" was a big deal, and I'd devour anything with Bill Murray or Chevy Chase in, but this movie right here?  This is the pure, uncut dope I craved.  "Hot Shots!" is in the line of films that started with "Kentucky Fried Movie," ran through "Airplane!," and the "Naked Gun" films.   They're heavy on sight gags and movie parodies, don't require much thought (beyond just getting into the spirit of things), and if you can get in the right frame of mind, these films are a lot of fun.

Topper Harley (Charlie Sheen) is an Air Force washout, living on an Indian Reservation.  But his country needs him, and he's convinced to return to service as a pilot, provided he can pass a psychiatric exam.  Topper falls for his psychiatrist, Ramada Thompson (Valeria Golino), which dumps fuel on a long-running family grudge with Lt. Kent Gregory (Cary Elwes).  Eventually, they must get along to complete a mission.

But that's not important right now.  What is important is "Hot Shots!" is packed with jokes, delivered at a rapid-fire pace.  You have to pay attention to what's going on, as the sight gags hits nearly as frequently.  Some are large gags, like someone getting electrocuted behind a door.

Others are less so, like when Lloyd Bridges pulls out a cigarette case, pulls out a carrot stick, tamps it like a cigarette, and snaps off a healthy bite.  No mention is made of it, at all.  It just exists, and you either notice it or you don't (which means you're missing like half the movie).  If it feels like I'm harping on this, it's because this is an integral part of this style of humor.  It's fine if this material is too broad and too silly (which I consider it's chief assets) for someone, but if you've half-watched one of these films while futzing around on your computer, you haven't actually seen enough of that film to have an opinion on it.  In some regards, this is an extreme example of pre-second screen life.  Nobody would make a film like this now, because no one could have the confidence that an audience would pay attention to it without deliberately distracting themselves away from it.

Beyond that, this might be the end of prime Charlie Sheen, before his behavior turned him into a caricature of himself.  You've got this and "Major League," and the stuff before that like "Platoon" and his great small role in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."  Afterwards, well, the '90s were pretty much an unmitigated string of suck for Mr. Sheen.  But here, he's getting softballs thrown at him, and he's knocking them out of the park.  The humor here piles up on you, and once one joke hits squarely, you'll spend the rest of the movie giggling from the barrage of jokes.

"Hot Shots!" is something that holds up reasonably well, even removed from the context of the then-contemporary films that it was parodying.  You don't need to have seen "Top Gun" or "Cool as Ice" to laugh at the motley crew that flies with Topper, or Topper's attempt to seduce Ramada on his bike.  It's almost hard to evaluate whether or not movies like this are successful until they're removed from their time; you can't always tell if the humor holds up or is relying too heavily on references until everyone's forgotten the references.  For me, it's still really watchable.  Part of that might be nostalgia, but I'll also never get tired of jokes like, "If I was joking, I'd say, 'What do you do with an elephant with three balls?  Walk him and pitch to the rhino."

3 / 5 - TV

Ferris Bueller's Day Off - 1986

"Ferris Bueller's Day Off" - 1986
Dir. by John Hughes - 1 hr. 43 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

No matter how awful the decade, there are still positive things to be found in it's aftermath.  I am decidedly not a big "1980's" fan; I grew up in it, and surviving it once was enough.  But some of the movies (comedies, in particular) have held up pretty well.  "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" is one of the very best comedies from that era, and unlike most of the films that fit that bill, there's no one in the cast who is primarily considered a "comedian."

This film is the story of the titular character, Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick), a high-school student who has decided to play hooky.  But seeing as how this is his tenth absence of term, it's going to have to count.  He drags his best friend, Cameron (Alan Ruck), and his girlfriend (Mia Sara) into his scheme: a day trip to Chicago.  In order to do that, Ferris must out-smart his parents, teachers, his principal (Jeffrey Jones), and even his sister, Jeanie (Jennifer Grey).  When put in glib terms like this, it might sound like a brutal film to get through, but as is par for the course with comedies, at least half of the battle is the execution.

And the execution is damn-near perfect.  Matthew Broderick plays Ferris with a lack of malice; he's not a wise-cracking borderline-psychotic asshole, he's just a kid who doesn't want to go to school because it's a nice day, and then doesn't want to spend it alone, so he gets his close friends to go along with him.  He's also someone who's default setting is "why not," so when an opportunity presents itself, he takes advantage of it.  The character is written as someone who has already planned for everything, even if only barely, and there's a lot of fun to be had in seeing his ruses play out (even if it's kind of absurd, but the absurdity is kind of the point.  As Bill Hicks put it, life is a ride).  It's also a necessary counterpoint to the characters who are infuriated by his ability to get away with things (Principal Ed Rooney and his sister, Jeanie).  If there was ever a sense that Ferris was trying to get one over on the system or on an individual, it would really harm the goodwill the character generates, but that never pops up.  Ferris simply wants to have a nice day away from school, which is a sentiment we've all had at one point or another.

Another important factor: the other characters aren't really made fools of.  Someone doesn't have to lose in order for Ferris to win, which is probably the core message of the film.  The only character that really gets embarrassed is Principal Rooney, but that's only because he pushes so hard against Ferris.  Jeanie ends up in a police station at one point because (in a round-about way) she's pushing against Ferris (in a memorable scene with Charlie "Drugs" Sheen), but when she heeds Sheen's advice, things straighten out for her.  It's an important point "Ferris Bueller" makes, that people who are infuriated by other people's happiness are bound for a bad end.  It's only through the pursuit of your own happiness (and sharing that with others) that one can accomplish anything.

The other half of the battle is that this is a genuinely funny film.  It's a bit ahead of it's time, in terms of referencing pop culture (and not in an annoying, short-cut kind of way - perhaps the greatest example of this is the use of the "Stars War" theme, easily a decade before everyone and their uncle started having their way with every little detail of the Star Wars franchise), which makes it feel as if it's not as old of a film as it is.  There are probably at least half a dozen memorable scenes here, which is a sort of litmus test for a really great comedy.  Even relatively minor jokes have had a life of their own (like Ben Stein's droning, "Bueller?  Bueller?"), but the big scenes are great, too (like the parade scene, or the police station scene with Grey and Sheen, or Ferris' race home, or the demise of Cameron's dad's car, or the lunch "Abe Froman" scene, or...).  There's no shortage of really funny material, from the opening scene all the way to after the credits.  And you can even see the influence of this movie on other films, from the contraption-based humor of another John Hughes film, "Home Alone," to the somewhat tortured time-travel logic of the "Bill and Ted's" movies.  There's nothing more you can ask for than for a comedy to still be laugh-out-loud funny twenty-five years on, and for other filmmakers to adopt pieces of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" for their own purposes.

5 / 5 - Blu-Ray

Major League - 1989

"Major League" - 1989
Dir. by David S. Ward - 1 hr. 47 min.

Theatrical Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

A rag-tag bunch of misfits making a run at fleeting glory is a staple of sports movies.  "Major League" did it about as well as any movie has.  Or, at least as funny as any other movie has.  For all the things that the 1980s did wrong, one thing that it did very, very well was baseball movies.  More specifically, the late-80s saw four well above-average baseball films: 1988's "Bull Durham" and "8 Men Out," and 1989's "Major League" and "Field of Dreams."  "Major League" is possibly the most formulaic of the batch, but comedy isn't about reinventing the wheel most of the time.

In this film, the wheel looks like this: a Vegas showgirl inherits ownership of the long-suffering Cleveland Indians, and assembles a team of marginal talent in order to drive attendance down to the point where she can legally move the team to Miami.  The manager is a thirty-year minor-league manager, the veterans are either disinterested or broken down, and the rookies are eccentric (but also too dumb to know not to try).  So there it is, your basic batch of misfits trying to show that they belong.  There's also a good romance sub-plot between the Indians' catcher, Jake Taylor (Tom Berenger), and the girl that he let get away in his wilder years, Lynn Wells (Rene Russo).  A very underrated aspect of "Major League" is that each of the main characters has appropriate age-related motivations.  Jake's aware at how lucky he is to have one more chance, and when he stumbles across his ex at a restaurant, it's like a gift.  The younger players are concerned about establishing themselves, the older ones about hanging on.  It makes for a good blend of stories.

Of course, a large component to the success of any comedy is the individual performances.  And when you look at the cast here, it's no surprise that the performances carry the film.  It's got a couple of early leading roles for Charlie Sheen (as ex-California Penal Leaguer Rick Vaughn), Wesley Snipes (as showboating Willie Mays Hayes), and Rene Russo (Jake Taylor's love interest, Lynn Wells).  It's got a couple of veteran actors in James Gammon (gruff manager Lou Brown) and Chelcie Ross (junkballer Eddie Harris), and a bonafide TV star in Corbin Bernsen (Roger Dorn).  There's even a decent smaller role for Dennis Haysbert, who you might know as the President from "24" or from a series of insurance commercials.  And if you've ever wanted to watch the President from "24" lifting weights while chomping on a cigar and wearing nothing but a jock strap, you're in luck here.

And that brings me to a very important point: this is a rough-around-the-edges crew here.   They don't necessarily get along, they uniformly swear frequently, are often in a state of semi-undress.  It's a batch of men who drink, fight, and screw their way through life.  It's almost mind-boggling to imagine any of the major league sports organizations lending their logos and trademarks to such a foul-mouthed film currently; there's not much here that you'd describe as "family-friendly."  But it's that shagginess that makes "Major League" an interesting, funny film.  It's a throwback to another era, one where every player didn't look like they stepped out of an issue of "Men's Health," one where media training wasn't even a consideration, and a time where every misstep wasn't online in a matter of seconds.  There's a certain joy in watching these characters just exist without the sort of meta-awareness that can drain the spontaneity out of anything sports-related.

Of course, none of that would matter if "Major League" wasn't funny.  But it is funny, very funny.  Out of the four films mentioned earlier, I think that only "Bull Durham" is a better all-around film.  When a comedy holds up more than twenty years later, it's not an accident.  This is a good movie, and it's fun going back and seeing some talented young actors before their careers had acquired baggage.  And aside from 1992's "A League of Their Own," there wasn't another really good baseball movie after this until 2011's "Moneyball."  Being on the edge of a drought isn't the film's fault, but it is a long time to wait for another good baseball movie.

3.5 / 5 - DVD