Lloyd Bridges

The sequel to the wonderfully wacky Hot Shots! uses Rambo as its model for nonstop send-ups (though director Jim Abrahams can't resist inserting a Saddam Hussein lookalike, given the film's post-Gulf War release). This time, Lloyd Bridges, who was an admiral in the first movie, has become president (take that, Colin Powell!) and needs someone to take care of the threat posed by a certain mustached Middle Eastern dictator. Who better than ever-reliable Topper Harley (Charlie Sheen)?

The gang that created Airplane and The Naked Gun sets its sights on Top Gun in this often hilarious spoof starring Charlie Sheen, who previously only inspired laughs with his personal life. He plays Topper Harley, a fighter pilot with an ax to grind: clearing the family name. He gets involved in a relationship with Valerie Golino, a woman with an unusually talented stomach. But his mission is to avenge his father. Lloyd Bridges, late in his career, revealed an aptitude for this kind of silliness, here as a commander who is both incredibly dim and delightfully accident prone.

The 1982 sequel to Airplane! is basically more of the same class-clown ironies but with a more forced feeling to the jokes. In the first film, veterans such as Peter Graves, Robert Stack, and Lloyd Bridges were feeling their way through self-parody, and the air of experimentation was part of the fun. By this film, however, everybody knows what's up, and the assuredness of new cast members Raymond Burr, William Shatner, and Chuck Connors is almost counterproductive. Still, there's lots to laugh about.

The quintessential movie spoof that spawned an entire genre of parody films, the original Airplane! still holds up as one of the brightest comedic gems of the '80s, not to mention of cinema itself (it ranked in the top 5 of Entertainment Weekly's list of the 100 funniest movies ever made). The humor may be low and obvious at times, but the jokes keep coming at a rapid-fire clip and its targets--primarily the lesser lights of '70s cinema, from disco films to star-studded disaster epics--are more than worthy for send-up.