Review of Airplane! (1980) by Chris W — 17 Sep 2011

This is probably the mother of all spoof films, and, despite eing a tad dated, and having a few gags that fall a little flat, it's still one of the funniest and best of its kind.

The fiilm is a spoof of 70s disaster films, specifically the Airport series, and it follows a former fighter pilot named Ted who has a fear of flying after suffering war related trauma. He boards a plane containing his former love Elaine (a stewardess) in a desperate attempt to try to win her back. The flight takes a turn for the worse when a lot of the crew and passengers suffer from an outbreak of food poisoning, and Ted his forced to confront his fears and past if he wants to save the day.

This has an awesome ensemble cast featuring Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, and Ethel Merman. They all do a great job, and it's pretty difficult to say who really steals the show, as they all have their great moments.

Probably the most notable thing about htis film is the humor. It is of the absurdist and surreal varieties, and often very silly. Also, many of the jokes are delivered in dry deadpan fashions (both aurally and visually), which I thought made it even funnier. Furthermore, while this film has a bare bones plot, it's pretty much all about the jokes, as there are as many as possible shoved into this film. Seriously. It might take several viewings to catch everything, but that shouldn't be seen as a bad thing, especially when this is such a joy to watch.

Something that really caught my attention was the music. It's by Elmer Bernstein, and it's very fitting and plays up the melodramatic stuff it's spoofing nicely, but it's also super catchy and actually works as real music on its own and not just as the soundtrack for a silly comedy. It's some very solid and impressive work.

This is really essential viewing. Unfortunately a lot of the spoof films that this influnced aren't of the same quality, and the same goes for some of the other things made by ZAZ, but that doesn't take away from the fact that this is still an endlessly entertaining and brilliant work.