Metacritic reviews

It's silly, derivative and too wacky for its own narrative good; traits that the director and Proft wear like a Congressional Medal of Honor. But it's also the funniest 86 minutes I've spent in a movie theater since, well, Hot Shots! Anybody else ready for Part Trois?

If the first mission made roughly $50 million domestically, the sky could be the limit for this much better sequel -- a clever spoof of "Rambo" and a dozen other movies that employs the usual scattershot "Airplane!" approach but boasts a higher shooting percentage than its forebear. Look out, comedy fans: Fox is coming to get you.

[An] often hilarious film...Abrahams and Proft’s nonstop throwaway humor keeps spirits lifted and a smile on our faces, and it also has the admirable effect of deflating those action movies that exploit violence in the name of a pious, if dubious, patriotism.

Movies like this are more or less impervious to the depredations of movie critics. Either you laugh, or you don't. I laughed.

Yeah, but at the end, he gets into hand-to-hand combat with Saddam, and he kicks the guy's butt! I love that part.

Deliciously silly.

One of those rare things...a sequel that's funnier and more successful.

Much of the time, the film itself veers perilously close to becoming the sort of high- body-count action spectacular it’s supposed to be parodying. When gags are tossed off in the midst of bomb blasts and deafening machine-gun fire, is it any wonder that audiences will tend to ignore the comedy and focus on the mayhem? If Hot Shots! Part Deux proves anything, it’s that making fun of big, raucous, sky-high explosions is a joke of rapidly diminishing returns.

This is a long way from the inspirations of Airplane!

Unlike its grim predecessor, there are at least two chuckles this time round, a slapstick routine at a Buddhist monastery and a witty Apocalypse Now gag.