Airplane!

Ted Striker (Robert Hays) shares a tender
moment with love interest Elaine (Julie Hagerty)

Release Date: June 27, 1980. Running Time: 87 minutes. Screenplay: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker. Based on: Zero Hour!, by Arthur Hailey, Hall Bartlett, John Champion. Producer: Jon Davison. Director: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker.


THE PLOT:

When Ted Striker (Robert Hays) met his girlfriend, Elaine Dickinson (Julie Hagerty), he was a confident fighter pilot. But after his judgment call on a mission resulted in the deaths of his entire squadron, he was left badly shaken. Years later, Elaine - now a flight attendant - has declared that she's leaving him, stating that she cannot be with a man she does not respect. In an impulsive decision, Striker buys a ticket for her Chicago-bound flight, determined to change her mind.

It proves to be a fateful choice. Midway through the flight, passengers begin to fall ill. A doctor (Leslie Nielsen) figures out the common denominator among the sick: They all had fish as their in-flight meal. So did the flight crew, including Captain Oveur (Peter Graves). Soon, the plane is left without a pilot, and with Striker the only passenger aboard with any flight experience. The only hope the passengers and crew have for survival is his rusty skills, honed in a completely different type of plane. If he cannot overcome his past guilt, then they are all doomed!

Elaine, after sharing an intimate moment
with Otto the inflatable auto pilot.

CHARACTERS:

Striker: A character who might have jumped straight from the pages of a Sceenwriting 101 handbook. He has a direct link to the female lead and her job, and a past trauma directly related to the current disaster. He even has a drinking problem... in that he cannot take a drink without splashing liquid in his face. In a drama, all this (well, except the face-splashing) would be the stuff of dire clichés, but it's perfect for this type of parody. Robert Hays, who had started building a career as a serious actor prior to this film, plays the role much the same as if he was in a drama. He isn't stone-faced - when other characters make bizarre statements, he will give a nonplussed look or exchange a glance with Julie Hagerty's Elaine - but he never breaks character or does anything self-consciously goofy, which proves the exact right approach for the role.

Elaine: Though she knows Striker is aboard, she does not mention him as a potential replacement pilot when the captain falls ill. She clearly feels that he isn't up to the task, and likely hopes that a more suitable candidate is aboard. Once Striker is in the captain's chair, however, she works well with him. She also develops a brief but intimate relationship with Otto, the inflatable auto-pilot, in a quite funny visual gag with a terrific stinger. There isn't much characterization for Elaine (a holdover of the original Zero Hour, in which Linda Darnell's character was basically just "The Girl"), but actress Julie Hagerty is game for all the straight-faced physical gags required of her.

Dr. Rumack: "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley." Leslie Nielsen's iconically stone-faced performance transformed his career, remaking a busy but decidedly B-list dramatic actor into a top-tier comedy star. As with other performers in this movie, he scores laughs specifically by playing the role straight. But Nielsen doesn't stop there. He intensifies his crisp, wooden deliveries in such a way that his every utterance is funny: from relating the symptoms of the disease in the cockpit, heedless as the captain suffers each symptom in perfect time to his description, to his dramatic pep talk to Striker, to his repeated last-minute entries into the cabin to tell Striker and Elaine that the passengers are all "counting on you." He emerges as the comic MVP of the movie.

Rex Kramer: Nielsen's only serious competitor for that title is Robert Stack, who is also hilarious as Rex Kramer, Striker's former Commanding Officer. Kramer is a man so dramatic that he wears two pairs of sunglasses - so that after he's done dramatically gesturing with one pair, he can snap off the second pair and dramatically gesture with those! Stack was apparently very much in tune with the script, reportedly even explaining to a confused Lloyd Bridges that "we're the joke," and it shows with what I'd rate as one of the best performances of his career.

The Flight Crew: In contrast to Nielsen and Stack, Peter Graves reportedly did not "get the joke," and had to be persuaded by friends and family to sign on. Despite this, he's almost certainly the best thing about the film's first (slowest) Act, particularly as the captain shows a young boy the cockpit while asking him a series of increasingly creepy questions ("Do you like movies about gladiators?" is the most innocuous of them). Basketball superstar Kareem Abdul-Jabaar plays the co-pilot, which results in one funny scene where he responds to criticisms of his play style, and is itself a nod to the casting of football player Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch in the original Zero Hour.

Rex Kramer (Robert Stack).  So dramatic that
he needs two pairs of sunglasses.

THOUGHTS:

In my review of The Big Bus, a 1976 disaster movie spoof that was critically and financially unsuccessful, I noted that it probably was a victim of timing. It came out when disaster movies were still popular, which made audiences less inclined to want to see them made fun of. Airplane! came out when the genre was in its dying days, with films such as Concorde: Airport '79 and When Time Ran Out practically sending themselves up.

Even so, I noted one other disparity between the two movies. Airplane!, though lower budget, is simply a better movie. Forty years on, it has dated a bit. The pace of the gags feels slower now than it did at the time, and the entire shooting style seems more suited to the small screen than the large. Even so, and particularly once you get past the first half-hour, the movie retains its charm and, at its core, works in a way that The Big Bus often didn't.

There are two key factors in the movie's success: The script and the unified tone. This film was a direct remake of Zero Hour, a (too) straight-faced 1957 disaster movie co-scripted by Arthur Hailey. Yes, the Arthur Hailey who went on to write Airport. Zero Hour wasn't that noteworthy in itself, but it was well-structured and remains watchable (if unintentionally comical in itself). Most of all, it is an extremely well-structured screenplay, with a first act that neatly introduces the characters and the dilemma, which then builds before being resolved in a nail-biting climax.

All of that is retained for Airplane! This means that even when the jokes fall flat (and many do), the plot itself is still moving forward. There are deviations that swipe at other targets: a stewardess gives a child transplant patient a guitar serenade, as in Airport 1975... only in this film, she keeps knocking the IV out of the girl's arm, leaving the patient in convulsions. Hints of the filmmaker's previous sketch comedy, Kentucky Fried Movie, appear through Ted Striker's flashbacks, which lampoon targets such as From Here to Eternity and Saturday Night Fever. But it's worth noting that most of these deviations slow down the pace, even when they are funny. The movie is easily at its best when it sticks to the central plot, which it fortunately does for the bulk of its running time.

The film maintains a unified tone, presenting itself as a heightened drama. Heightened to the point of utter ridiculousness, that is. The filmmakers make sure all the main actors are playing their roles straight. We know we're watching a comedy, but the characters don't realize that they're in one. There is one exception: Stephen Stucker's flamboyant air traffic controller, who is definitely there to be zany. But he doesn't break the tone, I think because he only gets a very small amount of screen time and because he strikes a contrast with the rest of the cast.

Dr. Rumack (Leslie Nielsen) delivers a pep talk to
an anxious Striker.  Just don't call him Shirley.

OVERALL:

Airplane! remains great fun to watch. Yes, gags such as the overlong Saturday Night Fever riff aren't as funny as they used to be, and once-topical references to Ronald Reagan and to well-known coffee commercials just don't land forty years on. Even so, the movie has the joyous irreverence of the late 1970s, utterly unconcerned by the prospect of causing offense. It also benefits from a strong story structure, which keeps the narrative on track even when the jokes falter, and it almost single-handedly transformed the career of co-star Leslie Nielsen.

A classic.


Overall Rating: 9/10.

Sequel: Airplane II: The Sequel



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