"Hard Ticket to Hawaii" is an American live action film from 1987, so this one is now over 35 years old and it runs for slightly over 1.5 hours and the title here gives away already where the movie takes place in almost its entirety. Maui! Or Hawaii at least. The beginning may have been elsewhere still. The writer and director was Andy Sidaris and what we have here is a contender for his maybe most known work and just one out of a whole lot of films he shot during the mid1970s until late 1990s that included (usually blonde) women with a lot of firepower and dight power and maybe even bigger bra power. Or I should maybe say mid1980s till early 1990s because this is really where he was at his most prolific. What is also interesting is that Sidaris was already an Emmy winner at that point, for his work on the Olympic Games. Let's not go into detail now about what he worked on there exactly, but an Emmy is an Emmy. Sidaris also portrays a smaller character from this film here. He had cameos in many of his films and this TV director or what he plays here is also not the first time that he shows up as a character like this. "Not the first time" is also a fitting description when it comes to the two female leads in this film here as Dona Speir and Hope Marie Carlton have worked with Sidaris on several occasions, so it seems as if he was somebody who trusted actors he worked with and cast them again. Also nice to see that most cast members here are still alive in 2023, but yeah the girls were really young, early 20s, and the boys weren't much older, around 30 maybe. An exception is Rodrigo Obregón who plays one of the main villains and sadly died back at the end of the 2010s. Sidaris himself is also no longer with us, but this is no huge surprise as he was in his mid50s back then already, which means he would be over 90 now.
I cannot say a lot more about the cast here because I am not familiar with the rest of the performers, even if some of them had prolific careers on other films and shows like Magnum P. I. for example. This kinda fits with the setting here too I assume. I could mention Colleen Nakasone though, who was maybe the most stunning cast member for me and I wish she had more screen time than the really tiny amount she had. Or at least acted in more films, but sadly she did not. Also more stunning than the two female leads I think, but they were alright too and if I say that as somebody who is generally not too much into blondes, then that means something. Let's look at the plot now: It may sound a bit mean, but there is no denying that these films are surely a bit on the trashy side. But maybe this is also what gives them their charm is probably the reason why they are not forgotten several decades later. The film just goes over the top in every thinkable form. The probably biggest cult moment of the film was when one guy is thrown up in the air and the male protagonists get out a bazooka and have him explode this exact moment there. Seconds later they do the same apparently with a female sex doll the bad guy was carrying with him in order to hide his gun behind it. Of course, it needed to be a sex doll. There is nothing else to use for such purpose. The build-up there was quite something already if you look at how he was riding his skateboard. Now that was actually pretty cool. Not gonna lie.
A graphically more violent scene that was equally lethal was the frisbee moment not too far away from the end already. There you have the perhaps biggest henchman play frisbee with one of the two male protagonists, but it was all a distraction and the good guy manages to switch out the frisbee against one with blades on the side and thus he kills the blonde guy with the shades and we see a lot of blood. The question you could ask for sure is why the bad guys did not see it and also ask another question what was up with this man's unnatural frisbee obsession there haha. Anyway, you can ask many questions about the film. Then there is the snake if course too. I could say a lot about that one, but it is really an inclusion you need to experience yourself, not only because of the showy moment when it literally flushes out of the toilet towards the end, but also the photograph taken by one character right before his death that identifies said snake as the killer. Or of course the words by one character about the snake when he explains to the girls why the snake is so dangerous, with what it has been infected. Too big. I hope it was equally good in the original English version as I watched the German dub, but yeah, why would they not translate it literally. The German explanation was hilarious though. It seems maybe more likely they changed something when it comes to the several James Bond references. Everybody knows Bond in Germany to this day, probably also did back in the 1980s, but it is possible that they referenced a character in the English original that was maybe not too famous in Germany, so they went with 007 instead here for us. Forget what I just wrote if it was also Bond in English. It was pretty funny to see the chicks talk about how he would have taken care of all the bad guys on one occasion and not let anybody live or even get away. The funniest thing was though when they talked about how he would have made love to the two afterwards.
Gently-speaking, this is surely not a film that feminists may appreciate much. The girls are exposing themselves, at least everything north of the waist, on several occasions for no real reasons other than randomly using the jacuzzi or taking a shower. Nudity was definitely for the sake of it here. There was one sex scene even that felt halfway to an adult film, but also merely implicative at the same time, so they surely wanted to avoid the X-rating here. Still kinda fitting how the guy does not accept the girl's advice that he should moan less loudly. Or take the words about a female saying she wants to be weak while she goes topless or take her (or the other blonde's) words about the size of a male genital later on and there is so much more in here when it comes to stuff like that. Pretty harmless references related to sex. The funniest for me was maybe a quote where they did a brilliant German translation when one character says to two others, a couple, when their ways part to do fine, but don't do it too often. Difficult to translate, but I loved this moment. There is so much more. Take the perhaps sleaziest character of the film who works at a club or bar or restaurants and introduces other characters to her two big breasts before making a reference to the rest of the woman. And so on. Oh yeah, by the way quickly back to 007: It says in the end when the older main antagonist in the background is also taken care of that he is half-English and half-Asian and there was another aspect I think that made it really sound like a 007 reference to me, how his most crucial henchman was described perhaps. To Dr. No of course. I wonder if people back then were thinking the same. Or are today. It could not have been me only.
So, as for the film as a whole, I would say that now it is really only worth seeing for the perhaps not totally unintentional comedy. So many moments there, like when they realize towards the end that they forgot to kill Romero. For really good moments, I have to dig deeper. I liked how they put the cast and crew names on the chests at the very start. The prologue there with two Asian cops running into more than they came for was already an opening that summarized the film in the nutshell. How they are trapped was almost hilarious, how they got killed was some foreshadowing for more violence to happen later on. Only the nudity was missing there, but this moved to the background anyway then in the last third of the film and did not really exist anymore after the sex scene. The violence and mission became more dominant then. Anything else? Oh yes, oh yes definitely way more that made this a strange little movie, like the random scene with a female bodybuilder posing, but apparently she was really famous back then, at least in the bodybuilding world. Or take the kidnapped woman where the actress got the desperation through really and the shock right after she is saved, but still has nothing else to do than immediately start kissing her rescuer in a most passionate way. Oh and always nice if you have a harpoon randomly stored in the closet as we know now. This is pretty much it then. If you summarize this film, you can surely say that there is most likely no way this film could get made in the 2020s, in the now, with all the people who could (should? Should not?) be offended by the contents in here. There is even one scene when the N-word is randomly thrown in and well people were not offended, maybe also because this word came from a Black man. It happens this way too in 2023 admittedly many, many times and without any guilt. But this short sequence there was so random too, like how there is talk by guys about one of them having the biggest genital. It is very random and sometimes funny because of how weird it all is. For me, this is not a failure, but also not good enough for a positive recommendation. I suggest you skip the watch, even if I can see why people would wanna see it, namely mostly for the unintentional (?) comedy factor.
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