Review: Airplane!

Directed by: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker

Written by: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker

Starring: Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves

Rating: [3.5/5]

World records exist for all types of accomplishments, even some strange ones the average person would not think deserve recognition. I cannot say for certain if a world record exists for the most jokes ever said within a movie, but if Airplane! is not the recordholder, then I need to see what has more. Filled to the brim with jokes indiscriminantly poking fun of everything and everyone under the sun, this film is the most unserious production. 

After his flight attendant girlfriend broke up with him, Ted (Robert Hays), a former pilot, decides to buy a ticket on a flight she’s working on. While trying to win back her affections, a food poisoning incident on the plane incapacitates the pilots, leaving the aircraft in chaos. It all leads to the inevitability that for the sake of everyone’s life, he’ll need to safely land the plane. 

Quite the unique viewing experience, Airplane! felt like a barrage of jokes assaulting me from beginning to end. The spilling of a vat of comedic inclinations for the purposes of generating laughter from the audience. While it does not have a 100% hit rate with its jokes, like most comedies, given the sheer volume of them, it’s impressive how many of them actually land. It makes for such a fun viewing experience even if the story as a whole does not drive much of the intrigue. 

If a story exists at all, it mostly lies with Ted as a traumatized war veteran that has fallen on hard times and has a drinking problem. His journey from fearing being in the skies again to needing to pilot this plane down for safety presents the only discernible character arc the story goes through. As you can imagine, that comes with plenty of jokes along the way, which includes him sweating out a liter of water in the process and the questionable help he receives. The support includes a blow-up doll if you want to know just how questionable. While he remains the protagonist of this film as much as one exists, the true star of the show lies in all of the comedic scenes that have bested the test of time. 

So many individual scenes stick out in trying to choose the funniest the film has to offer, but overall these jokes display the best of airplane and travel humor. As someone who has flown in planes aplenty, it was up my alley. From the attempts of the fellow passengers to calm a woman down who’s overwhelmed by the situation. Just as you think some sense would enter that situation, it just gets sillier. Then you have everything Leslie Nielsen is doing as Dr. Rumack. The individual who should be the most serious, given how much things begin to descend into madness and there’s a young child who needs dedicated medical attention on the plane. If you’ve read this far, you can guess just how serious he remains throughout the film. 

With so many different people on the plane, it allows for the movie to use them as the source or the expense of a joke. From the jive-speaking translations to the passengers trying to provide horrific medical advice, this sheer concentration of individuals on a plane creates a fertile feeding ground for these writers to create humorous situations for audiences to enjoy, and they succeed on that front. While plenty of focus remains on Ted and his girlfriend Elaine (Julie Hagerty), it’s comical to watch how much of the humor involving the other passengers occurs in the background as all of the chaos ensues. A mix of violence and desperation is happening while Elaine tries to calm Ted down and ask him to step up as the moment calls for him to save everyone on board and overcome his trauma from his military days.

While light on actual story and character development, Airplane! has a stated goal that it wants to accomplish. It seeks to present a joke every second to the audience as these characters play out everything happening on this plane at face value and no tongue-in-cheek whatsoever. On that front, it certainly succeeds, as its humor mostly lands and has done so for several decades now, as many to this day can quote the many great jokes throughout, ensuring it will always have a legacy as one of the funniest films ever made. It’s certainly a description I agree with.