We Have Clearance, Clarence. Roger Roger, What's Our Vector Victor? (Airplane! (DVD))

Member Name: Frankingsteins

Product:	Airplane! (DVD)
Date:	27/06/04 (1084 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Original and influential, Hilarious, with a wide range of jokes, Excellent performances, especially Leslie Nielsen

Disadvantages: A little dated now

In 1980, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker unleashed the comedy classic ‘Airplane!’ to international acclaim, a film that combines high-tension danger, struggling romance and a lot of silly jokes to create one of the most influential films of the early eighties. It’s a funny film.


PLOT


Elaine Dickinson (Julie Hagerty) is a stewardess on a flight that her lover Ted Striker (Robert Hays) boards in an attempt to win her back following his mental health problems and failure to completely get over his war experiences. Unfortunately it becomes apparent that the fish course served to many of the crew, including Captain Oveur (Peter Graves), has caused massive and potentially lethal food poisoning. It’s up to Striker to land the plane, aided by the ground control team, and save everyone’s lives.

If this story seems like an overused cliché, that’s because Airplane is essentially a parody of the stream of airline disaster films produced during the seventies, pioneering the spoof comedy genre that has now been sadly overused and destroyed thanks to unoriginal efforts such as ‘Scary Movie.’ Anyone who has seen and enjoyed ‘Airplane!’ will know that every scene is filled with jokes, from silly wordplay (“I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley”) to visual gags (a topless woman panicking in front of the camera) and basic slapstick fighting. The two lead characters are very reminiscent of the films being rightly mocked and as such carry out the story in a fairly traditional manner, albeit with plenty of time for comedy based on their actions, but the true comic genius of the film originates in the supporting players.


CAST & CHARACTERS


On the whole, the cast for this film are excellent, all contributing to the deadpan style of the whole thing. Although he is the main star, Robert Hays doesn’t impress as much as some of the others and can seem out of place at times, but the inclusion of Leslie Nielsen raises the comic level of this film enormously. Nielsen is surely one of the funniest actors in history; everything he says in that monotonous voice has me micturating myself. The inclusion of the crazy ground control staff, from Lloyd Bridges’ McCrosky, a man who picked the wrong weak to stop abusing his body with chemicals, to the ludicrously camp Johnny played by Stephen Stucker.

Although it seems like a good idea at the beginning, the over-acting of Julie Hagerty becomes a little frustrating as the film progresses, and it’s perhaps due to programmes such as ‘The Office’ and ‘I’m Alan Partridge’ that I find the more low-key performances the most enjoyable – real-life basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabaar plays an exaggerated version of himself under the guise of the co-pilot, making his scenes with the excellent Peter Graves even more watchable.

Aside from Striker and Elaine, the lovers whose personal lives chaotically mingle with the plot, most of the characters are presented as ill-at-ease flyers with personal problems – in the end, not even the innocent children and religious characters are shown to be free of corruption, as a nun is seen beating a woman to keep her calm while a young girl tells a boy who is trying to befriend her that, “I like my coffee black… like my men.” Even the calm Dr. Rumack clearly suffers from some kind of mental disorder, misinterpreting peoples’ questions and how to act in a crisis situation.


THE HUMOUR


‘Airplane!’ is a hugely popular film as the comedy is present throughout, never becoming too complex for the average moviegoer to understand. That said, it may not appeal to everyone but as a fan of films such as ‘The Naked Gun’ and ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail,’ I loved this instantly and have watched it many times since I was young. Even situations I wouldn’t normally find amusing are executed perfectly here, such as an extended scene in which Robert Stack beats up a procession of religious workers in an airport. Clever humour is also used to trick the viewers however and some of this subtlety makes for the best jokes of the film – Bridges standing at his desk with a photo of himself standing at his desk on the wall, a doctor discussing a heart operation while a replacement heart leaps around his table and Stack stepping out of what was assumed to be a mirror (a joke repeated in the second film when William Shatner reveals that a TV screen was in fact a window) are excellently underplayed.

The parody element extends beyond disaster films, including a rendition of what could only be Saturday Night Fever with boomerang clothes, while some of the subjects made fun of could potentially be sensitive: mental problems, religion and suicide are all mocked to a degree, but then comes the hilariously literal ‘sh** hitting the fan’ scene to keep everyone amused and content.


VERDICT


This film is an undeniable comedy classic, but it has obviously aged somewhat over twenty four years. The films it is criticising are no longer a common feature of the cinema and many of the jokes have been used repeatedly since, but the light-hearted comedy value of the film has not been lost. Two years later came the sequel, conveniently titled ‘Airplane II: The Sequel,’ which was also very funny but did basically re-use most of the jokes and situations from this first film. Writers Abrahams, Zucker and other Zucker soon went on to create the moderately successful TV series ‘Police Squad!’ followed by its hugely popular film incarnation ‘The Naked Gun’ which, while not as influential and perhaps not quite as funny, is another very entertaining series of films starring Leslie Nielsen. Nielsen is approaching eighty years of age but is still going strong, but ‘Airplane!’ may be his finest hour.

I would not hesitate in recommending this film to people of all ages as the only ‘controversial’ elements are a pair of jiggling breasts and a couple of minor, well-timed swear words, and I loved it just as much when I was a child as I do today. I’m also sure plenty of old people will enjoy the plane dilemma, even if they do find these young people with their ‘drinking problem’ jokes a bit silly.

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