Hot Shots!

Hot Shots! 1991 20th Century Fox.
Starring: Charlie Sheen, Cary Elwes, Valeria Golino, Lloyd Bridges, Jon Cryer, Kevin Dunn, Bill Irwin, Ryan Stiles
Director: Jim Abrahams
Available at Amazon: Single DVD. Two-fer with Hot Shots! Part Deux.

Jim Abrahams goes solo to bring us this parody that's been described as Top Gun meets Airplane!

Twenty years before the present day, pilot Leland "Buzz" Harley (Irwin) loses control of his plane and bails, leaving his co-pilot Dominic "Mailman" Farnum (Stiles) to crash land by himself. Mailman survives, but he is killed in a deer hunting accident, thanks to the branches stuck to his helmet.

Buzz's son Topper (Sheen) wakes up from a nightmare he's having about the incident, and is soon asked by Lt. Commander Block (Dunn) to return to duty as a pilot for the U.S. Navy (whose planes are helpfully labelled 'The Navy' in case we didn't recognize them). Topper had retired from the Navy to live with Native Americans. He also becomes romantically involved with his therapist Ramada (Golino), which poses a problem because she's linked to another pilot, Kent Gregory (Elwes), who hates Topper because he lost his dad thanks to Buzz's action, and Kent is convinced that Topper will eventually kill him while in action.

The mission is to destroy a nuclear power plant, which Topper does with a malfunctioning jet. The owner of an aerospace firm is trying to sabotage the mission to make the Navy's current planes look bad so they will replace them with his German made products. Topper also has time to literally drop a bomb on Saddam before returning to base with what's left of his plane.

Hot Shots! is an old favorite from my teenage days. Highly recommended.