Hot Shots!

Hot Shots! (1991)
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
Cast: Lloyd Bridges, Charlie Sheen, Valeria Golino, Cary Elwes
Extras: “Making Of” Featurette, Trailer
Rating:

There is a small group of people in Hollywood who manage to use a formula and re-use it over and over again with great success. Jim Abrahams is such a person and his persiflage ’Hot Shots!’ is entirely in line with his other films, such as ’Naked Gun’, ’Airplane’ and ’The Kentucky Fried Movie.’

Spoofing just about every successful movie of the late 80s, ’Hot Shots!’ is a fast-paced comedy that is as riotous as anything you can imagine. It established Charlie Sheen as Topper Harley and throws him into a maelstrom of possible and impossible situations that will have you screaming with laughter.

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment is presenting ’Hot Shots!’ in its 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio on this DVD in a transfer that is 16×9 enhanced. The picture is very clean and clear and shows no blemishes or mars. Colors are very good and vibrant, bringing the colorful action on the screen to full life. Blacks are also well rendered with good shadow delineation. The image exhibits a very good definition, bringing out every bit of detail form the original film print. No edge-enhancement is distracting from the viewing experience and the compression is also very well done without introducing compression artifacts.

The audio presentation on the DVD comes as a 5.1 channel Dolby Digital mix that is quite active and makes good use of the surround channels. The frequency response and the dynamic range of the track is very good, making for a solid, and rich, sonic experience. Dialogues are well integrated and always understandable while the soundtrack helps to propel the film forward.

’Hot Shots!’ is silly without end and every chance the writers got to make fun of another contemporary film, classic or situation, you can be assured that they’ve taken the chance and ran with it. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment’s DVD version of the film is beautiful to behold, making this DVD a great addition to any DVD collection.