Review of Airport 2013 (2014) by Sean W — 22 Mar 2009

Bring on the cheese. An all-star cast led by Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin deal with every crisis you can imagine happening.

- An important runway is blocked by a crippled plane which must be moved while not damaging the plane.

- Lancaster and Martin don't like each other -- at all.

- a snowstorm shuts down half the east seaboard.

- Lancasters wife wants a divorce.

- Martin knocks up a Stewardess (this is 1970, so they were still stewardesses) who then gets injured later on.

- there is a stowaway on the plane.

- a group of residents are picketing the airport, and Lancaster is on the verge of getting fired because the airport heads want him to shut down and he refuses.

And to top it off...

- there is a suicidal mental patient on the plane, who btw was once a demolitions expert and he has a bomb.

Yes, this movie has it all. And is even more interesting in the post 9/11 sense in that..

- an old woman can sneak on a plane extra-easily and get away with getting scolded and flown back home for free.

- a man can get a bomb onto the plan with no hassle whatsoever.

And.

- there is no air marshal, so the old woman is employed to take on the bomber.

Not to mention that people can smoke on the plane.

Even more so, AIRPORT is even more a product of its time given the fact that there is over an hour of laborious character development, and the plane doesn't even leave the ground until almost an hour and 20 minutes in.

Still....at the overlong 2 hour and 16 minutes of running time, it's still fun to watch. Perhaps it's not AIRPLANE, but the fact that it's all played straight perhaps makes it much funnier.