Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1993
Running Time	84:56
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Jim Abrahams
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Charlie Sheen Lloyd Bridges Valeria Golino Richard Crenna Brenda Bakke Miguel Ferrer Rowan Atkinson Jerry Haleva David Wohl Mitch Ryan Michael Colyar Ryan Stiles Rosemary Johnston
Case	?
RPI	$19.95	Music	Basil Poledouris

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	Czech Danish English English for the Hearing Impaired Finnish German for the Hearing Impaired Hebrew Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Spanish Swedish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, some jokes written in amongst the other stuff.

    Superior in almost every way to its predecessor, Hot Shots! Part Deux sets about sending up its subject matter in every respect from its opening moments, with its jibes aimed squarely at the 80s action genre.

    With a plot that is centred around a rip-off of Rambo: First Blood – Part II and Rambo III, our hero topper Harley (Charlie Sheen) has been living as a kickboxing recluse in Thailand when his best friend and former mentor Colonel Walters (Richard Crenna) is captured. Recruited by CIA vixen Michelle Huddleston (Brenda Bakke), Topper heads into the tropical jungles in an unidentified country located somewhere between Iraq and a little known area called A Hard Place (ha ha) to save his friend and to free the hostages held by Saddam after the Gulf War, with the help of a collection of delta force commandos and his old girlfriend, Ramada (Valeria Golino). And yes, I know, there aren't any tropical jungles in the Middle East, but this isn't meant to make any sense, so just go with it.

    No big-name 80s movie is spared from ridicule here, with everything from Basic Instinct to Platoon to Apocalypse Now to Robocop to T2 taking a serious beating, and Hot Shots! Part Deux is all the better for it. Indeed, the film feels more complete than the first movie, with more laughs and spoof sequences that work. The Duracell Bunny scene had me in stitches, and the bodycount comparison is just too funny. And anybody who has ever complained about films where the hero’s gun just never runs out of bullets should see how this movie takes that to the extreme.

    If you are not into the spoof genre, then this is unlikely to appeal to you. If you are, then you should really check this out if you haven’t already. It makes the Naked Gun sequels look bland by comparison, and the Scary Movie series just plain lame. It relies on you having quite a bit of film knowledge and is really aimed at those of us who grew up through the late 70s and the 80s and were subjected to so much testosterone-laden, brain dead Hollywood tripe during that time that we can’t take it seriously any more, and just want to have a laugh at its expense.

    Sure, this is plain stupid and extremely dated. But if you’re twenty- or thirty-something you might remember some of he films that are getting hammered here. Dumb, pointless, silly fun – and at under 90 minutes, it’s short and sweet too. Well worth a rent for a beer and pizza night.

Video

    Presented in the original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, the 16x9 enhanced image is nicely rendered for a film of this era.

    The image is a touch soft overall, which can be a little hard on the eyes at times.

    Colour is a tad washed out, but not like VHS. Shadow detail is pretty good with no apparent graininess in those slightly darker shots.

    There are no MPEG artefacts, and film-to-video transfer artefacts were very rare. The worst was some minor aliasing on the edges of some foliage in the background.

    During the credits and the body count sequence we had some dirt on the print and obviously some primitive and inexpensive filming techniques were used during those parts. Other than that, there are very little in the way of film artefacts.

    Subtitles are white with a black border. The English subtitles follow the dialogue pretty closely.

    This is a single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Along with the original video presentation is the original 2.0 Dolby Surround soundtrack, available in English as well as German and Spanish overdub, all encoded at 192Kb/s. The overdubbed tracks lose some ambience, but the lip syncing is pretty good.

    The dialogue on the English track is fairly clear and there are no major audio sync problems. The outdoor scene on the boat has obviously been voiced over in the studio at a later stage and you can note the minor sync issues in the original print there.

    There is a bit of left-right directional action, but nothing major. The surrounds were not heavily used, and only really chirped up with the music.

    The score by Basil Poledouris is hardly his best, and pales by comparison to the music score he did for Robocop and Starship Troopers. In fact, his style is better suited to those science fiction films than to this sort of spoof comedy.

    Sadly, there is no subwoofer use.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menus

    All menus are 16x9 enhanced. They are also silent.

Theatrical Trailer (2:16)

    The only extra is the original trailer, presented in 1.33:1, non-16x9 enhanced, 2.0 Dolby Stereo. The trailer gives away most of the really good jokes, so don’t watch it beforehand.

    We’ve been gypped – the R1 version comes with:

• Featurette – “An Adventure In Filmmaking”;
• Featurette – “Early Awareness”.

    That said, this is a fairly silly and dated comedy so I don’t know if those things are really worth the outlay of purchasing in R1. You might think twice before going to those lengths, particularly give the cheap price here.

    Hot Shots! Part Deux is stupid, silly and pointless and all the better for it. The comedy is very dated, which tends to happen with spoofs, but you’ll get your rental money’s worth on a beer and pizza night. Best watched when three sheets to the wind or more.

    Video is a tad soft but at least it’s in the right aspect ratio.

    The 2.0 Dolby Surround track gets the job done, but is hardly worth writing home about.

    As for extras, we get just a trailer, and not a very good one at that.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall