YMMV / Hot Shots! Part Deux

• Critical Dissonance: Reviewers preferred the first movie, but audiences seem to find it as good if not better.
• Crosses the Line Twice: A few times.
  Topper: I want to meet your parents and pet your dog.
  Ramada: My parents are dead, Topper, my dog ate them.
  • Also how Ramada and Dexter met. Dexter is clearly a pedophile and it's heavily implied his "romance" with Ramada was Wife Husbandry. The way she talks about their relationship as if it were a classic love story is both disturbing and amusing.
• Even Better Sequel: The original film is a clever spoof of Top Gun but the "Ace Pilot Flyboy" movies just don't have the same wealth of material to joke around with as the Rambo-esque action movies. In Part Deux, the jokes come faster and the parody is more spot-on.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In James Rolfe's review of Rambo IV, he mentioned that the "Bloodiest Movie Ever" gag from this film is moot now, as Rambo IV completely beats it in terms of both gore and violence.
  • The aforementioned joke also compares the body count to two Paul Verhoeven movies. Starship Troopers, by the man himself, would beat the body count four years after 1993.
  • Early in the film a Subway restaurant can be seen in Iraq. This would have been out of place in 1993 when the restaurant had very few branches outside America... but now the franchise has expanded so much that there actually ARE Subway stores in Iraq.
• Memetic Mutation: War: It's fantastic!
• One-Scene Wonder: Martin Sheen as his character from Apocalypse Now so he and Charlie can compliment each other on their performances in Wall Street. It's quick but it's a joke that absolutely kills.
• Retroactive Recognition: Ryan Stiles plays a member of Topper's team ("I'm looking forward to blowing something up."). He would also later play Dr. Herb Melnick, who marries Alan's ex-wife Judith; Alan is portrayed by Jon Cryer, who had starred in the first Hot Shots! film (Stiles was also there but in a much smaller role).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: While the film is good, some people claim that Rowan Atkinson's character was used only as a Jobber for Charlie Sheen in the humor department. Rowan does not display his full range of comedic talents with Dexter, not to mention the circumstances of how Dexter and Ramada hooked up.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • Saddam Hussein being treated as threatening yet comical places this movie squarely in The '90s. It's also noteworthy that Saddam is watching The Arsenio Hall Show.
  • The cameo from American Gladiators Shelly Beattie and Raye Hollitt (Siren and Zap) complete with Eliminator places the film during the Nineties, for sure (both before the original series’ cancellation in 1996 and before Beattie's death in 2008).
  • President Benson asks the Japanese "not to build such great cars", expressing the Japan Takes Over the World fears of that era.
  • Dexter is excited about appearing on Phil Donahue's and Sally Jesse Raphael’s shows, but can't remember the name of "that black chick". Many viewers born in the past twenty-five years probably don’t know who Donahue or Sally Jesse are, but do at least know of Oprah.

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