Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987)

Following the entertaining Malibu Express (1985), Hard Ticket to Hawaii is the second film Andy Sidaris would make in the 1980s, and it is by far the most widely seen of his “Bullets, Bombs, and Babes” series. While it’s not exactly better than less discussed Sidaris masterworks, it’s not hard to see why it has received the most attention. Hard Ticket is definitely the most shamelessly obnoxious of the Sidaris canon with an endless barrage of boobs, horrible dialogue, guns, explosions and razor-edged frisbees.

Nice, eh? Now keep that looping and peruse the choice screen grabs below. Take them in – nice and easy – while listening to that beautiful, beautiful song.

Okay, now we can get into the review, which, I warn you, is not going to be much of a review. While watching Hard Ticket to Hawaii with a few pals, a question often arose, “what is a ‘hard’ ticket?” Googling the definition, all I came up with was “an actual physical ticket” and “a ticket entitling one to a reserved seat.” Okay, so it means a ticket – the “hard” part isn’t exactly necessary, I guess. Not that anyone in Hard Ticket to Hawaii actually required a ticket, whether a physical one or some sort of e-ticket… they all made their own way whether by private plane or boat. But anyway, I’m getting sidelined. Yes, the title is stupid and appropriately so. There are few movies as perfectly dumb as Hard Ticket. Hard Ticket is somewhat aware of its stupidity – although not of how deep its stupidity runs – and Sidaris attempts to play on this with some unbelievably cringe-inducing jokes that lead to soul-destroying laughs.

A brief (and pilfered from IMDB) overview of the plot will give you an insight into the brilliant idiocy we’re dealing with. Early on in Hard Ticket, two goofy drug enforcement agents are strung up and gunned down by some drug smuggling bad asses led by a buffoon called “Shades.” In a pretty much unrelated incident, Donna (Dona Speir) and Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton), two saucy special agents, accidentally intercept a delivery of diamonds intended for drug lord Seth Romero. Romero is a maniac and is obsessed – obsessed – with getting back these diamonds. Two other agents working for the agency – Rowdy (The Bold and the Beautiful‘s Ronn Moss) and some long-haired creep that looks like he fell out of a late 90s porn flick – receive a note in a sandwich, which tells them to go and help Donna and Taryn. Oh yeah, and there’s a contaminated snake – contaminated by cancer infected rats – on the loose too.

I’ve just sat here staring at the screen for about ten minutes, wondering how I’m going to write a review for Hard Ticket to Hawaii. I could cull this review down to one word: magic. If you like your movies big, dumb and loud… well, it does not get much better than this. With one of the most ill-thought out, convoluted scripts in the history of cinema, Hard Ticket throws out subplot after subplot, pointless character after pointless character and lines of dialogue that require you to pause and rewind to make sense of them. Whether a character is comparing another character’s brain to a shit-free birdcage or a blow up doll is being blown up by a bazooka, Hard Ticket never lets up pulverizing its audience’s braincells. But instead of saying what so many have already said about Hard Ticket before, I thought I’d simply post a few links to a few key scenes that will surely wet your appetite if you are yet to see this amazing piece of cinematic history…

And the above YouTube clips don’t even feature my favourite scene – the funniest, most inappropriately orgasmic post-sex scene put to film. So, put down the heavy doobies, folks. They are not required for Hard Ticket to Hawaii. If you have not seen this yet, you are yet to experience life.