Movie Review: Airplane!

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Lots of laughs

Cons: Some laughs don’t work; a bit dated

The Bottom Line:

A food poisoned flight

Provides opportunity

For laughs a-plenty

If You Don’t Laugh, It’s a Real Catastrophe

Somehow, I’ve missed seeing Airplane!  I know, someone with my sense of humor?  How did that happen?  I was able to fix that recently.  While I certainly enjoyed it, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would.

The movie tells the story of Ted and Elaine.  Ted (Robert Hays) was a pilot in the war, but after a horrible accident, he’s been afraid to fly.  Elaine (Julie Hagerty) is a stewardess.  Ted really loved Elaine, but she is tired of waiting for him to move on from his past, so she is leaving him.  She’s moved out and left him a note.  However, he found it before her next shift as a stewardess begins, and he tries to talk to her at the airport.  When that doesn’t work, he faces his fear and buys a plane ticket for her flight from LAX to Chicago.

However, things get rough when half the passengers get food poisoning thanks to some bad fish.  Unfortunately, the entire pilot crew also ate the fish.  Now, the only hope for landing the plane successfully is Ted.  Can he overcome his fear of flying to save everyone?

This movie is a spoof of the disaster flicks of the 70’s, but takes much of the plot from a 1958 movie – Zero Hour!  Never having seen the inspirations behind the film, I just took this film based on its own merits.

As I said earlier, I did enjoy the film.  Parts of it were a bit out there, and I think trying to follow another film’s plot so closely hampered it a little bit.  For example, we know early on that something will happen to get Ted into the cockpit, but it still takes the film almost half the running time to get to that point.

The attempts at humor are non-stop.  As is the case when that happens, some jokes work and some fall flat.  Considering this is a PG film, I was a bit surprised at some of the sexual jokes they managed to get into the film.  Today, it would definitely be considered PG-13.  However, there were many jokes that work, made all the funnier by the fact that the actors were delivering the lines in such an earnest manner.  Then there are the puns and running gags.  A couple of the running gags get old, but others grew more outlandish, making them more fun.

As I just hinted, the cast is perfect.  They make the outlandish believable and keep their characters real so that we care about the outcome.  It’s a very fine balance, and they do a great job at it.

I think another reason for my reaction might be the fact that the film is from 1980.  Yes, it’s almost 40 years old.  Some elements are just more dated now, making them less funny.

While I didn’t love Airplane! as much as I thought I might, I can see why people consider it a classic.  I’m glad I watched it and got quite a few laughs from it.