From the poster and its tagline "When I talk, you're gonna laugh yourself hoarse," you are either going to think this might be a stupid fun movie or you might just say "Well, fuck that shit!" and be on your merry way. Which would be a viable opinion to have considering that it is a talking animal movie which don't really have that good of a track record to begin with but this is also the 80's, when a lot of movies began to get really dumb for the mainstream audience. I could be a millennial jackass for saying that though, so I'll just say that this probably wasn't going to be a hit even when it came out. And that was the case, making around $6.5 million on a $9 million budget. But is this movie all that bad, really?
First, the leads: Bobcat as Fred Chaney, a simple minded man whose mother passes prior to the start of the movie and is left with half of a stock brokering company and Don the horse. One of the first things that can be a turnoff to anyone watching the movie is the voice that Bobcat is going for in this movie, almost as if he is in a perpetual state of constipation most of the time. The tone of his voice fluctuates in weird moments, even in single words lines like when his neighbor Leonard asks Fred about the horse and Fred says "No," which even that sounds really weird and off-putting. Or when Fred has to cover for Don when he brings his love interest Allison over. Sometimes, the voice can bring a bit of comedy to it that can hit the mark with an awkward thud like the big speech he makes towards the end.
Now onto Don the horse, I guess who is the main attraction of the film. At first, the horse was voiced by Elliott Gould but was replaced by John Candy after a bad test screening, leading to a rewrite of the dialogue which Candy chose to ignore and improvised most of his lines. This might actually be one of the movie's biggest strengths since Candy was one of those personalities that could bring some sort of life to some dead on arrival material just by being himself; this adds a lot more to the film in the process of being a typical asshole of a talking animal. The character of Don is one where he does contribute a lot to the plot, as he is the one who give Fred a stock tip that makes the latter rich early on and is also the one who has to win the literal big race in the end. Along the way, he gets into some wacky shenanigans like the party animal scene where all these animals come in a destroy Fred's apartment. But why does the horse talk in the first place? He comes from a family of chosen horses (essentially gifts to the world according to the opening credits) and he himself is one of the last few remaining aside from his father (voiced by Burgess Meredith) and his brother whose dialogue all comes from Three Stooges shorts. Honestly, Don the horse probably makes this movie a lot better than it should be because of John Candy. Anyone else in the role might have not have added the same kind of charm.
Other characters include Fred's stepfather and primary antagonist Walter Sawyer, played by Dabney Coleman with this being my introduction to him as an actor (which I could technically say the same about Bobcat since the few things I saw with him in it, I forgot and only saw his directed film God Bless America, which was great by the way, so go watch that) and Coleman seems to be having a lot of fun here. The weird smile of his with the crooked teeth adds to the sliminess in a way as he tries to get a hold of Fred's shares of the company. There is "that chick from Dune" Virginia Madsen as the love interest Allison and she does a rather capable job, somehow her and Bobcat are able to form some sort of chemistry where you could buy that they would like each other in some form although maybe not romantically. Burgess Meredith is alright as Don's father who dies and is reincarnated as a horsefly, giving him a pep talk that does start off with one of my favorite moments when Don says "Is that you, Lord?" and the movie does take advantage of the casting somewhat by throwing in a Rocky reference. Not sure about the rest of the cast since they don't contribute much aside from Walter's assistant.
So would I give a recommendation to Hot to Trot? If you are a fan of some dumb comedies, then yes you should. Despite what I've said about it in a negative light, I still had a lot of fun with it. Probably will never be a classic but if you've got some time to kill and want a few laughs, you could do so much worse than this one.
