Airplane!

I'd love to say that 1980's AIRPLANE! is a timeless comedy, but kids these days....I've had a few unfortunate experiences trying to introduce them to what is easily one of the funniest movies in my lifetime.  I say "timeless" because (besides some dated references to then famous figures and TV commercials) many of the jokes are no more sophisticated than what you heard on the playground in elementary school.  Much of the humor is tasteless and downright silly.  When someone says the shit will hit the fan, well, we get to see that, literally.  There are jokes about throwing up, boobs, suicide, sex - you know, the usual things.  There are also somewhat more sophisticated verbal gags that may not be caught on the first viewing.

The trio of directors David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrahams wrote and directed AIRPLANE! as a spoof of those AIRPORT films from the 1970s, and also 1955's ZERO HOUR, which when viewed is startling as to how much the boys really cribbed.  In many ways, that film is funny enough on its own.  After years of enjoying ZAZ's movie, I've realized that one of the reasons this film is so successful is how straight it plays everything.  Aside from Stephen Stucker, the caustic effeminate in the control tower, everyone acts as if they're in a legitimate drama.  So of course actors like Peter Graves, Robert Stack, and Lloyd Bridges were cast to lend authenticity.  If any of them broke the rhythm, it wouldn't have worked.  This is why so many later "satiric" genre comedies fail.  The SCARY MOVIE series.  Or NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE, on and on.  The casts know they're in a parody, and are winking throughout.  That's not funny.  Conversely, the cast of AIRPLANE! is committed.  Leslie Nielsen, then known for dramatic roles, would become a fixture in goofball parodies for years to come because of his work here.

The gags are nearly nonstop.  You have to pay attention to the backgrounds and peripheries to catch everything.  Funny signs, newspaper headlines, newscasts, odd behavior.  Everyday things make some of the best gags, or everyday things out of their usual context, like the guy checking the roast in a radar range among all the equipment in the air traffic control tower.  Or the guy doing his laundry there.  There are flashbacks that parody classic and contemporary films for, above all, the sake of another gag, yet always propel the story.  The current parodies only go for easy references, for "ha ha, I recognize that.", rather than what the ZAZ guys do, using the familiar as a starting point for their own creative stuff.  Often, that will involve anachronisms like having the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" play while Ted Striker (Robert Hays) reminisces of his long ago first meeting with Elaine (Julie Hagerty) in a rough bar that also doubles as a disco.  Er, something like that.

In the present, former fighter pilot Ted (who suffers PTSD) finds himself at the controls of a commercial flight when the crew (and most of the passengers) fall victim to food poisoning.  Elaine is a stewardess (yes they called them that back in the late '70s) who is Ted's ex.  That's all the plot you need.

Trying to describe AIRPLANE! is like dancing about architecture, so see it for yourself.  I watched it an untold number of times on cable back in my teens, and can quote most of it.  I still remember my first viewing, at the Plaza Theater in West Palm Beach.  I was eleven.  My father was roaring with laughter, so loudly other people in the theater were laughing at him.  He wasn't the only one.