Airplane! (1980) * * * 1/2

 

Directed by: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker

Starring:  Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen, Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, Stephen Stucker, Peter Graves, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Airplane! opened up the 1980's by spoofing the legion of disaster movies from the 1970's.    Those movies, whether good or hokey, were prime targets.   Airplane! centers its gags around a Chicago-bound flight in which the crew and most of the passengers encounter food poisoning.   A former fighter pilot haunted by an air battle which cost many of his squadron members their lives is one of the healthy passengers, and now must land the plane despite his lack of confidence and his "drinking problem" (not quite what you'd expect).

Ted Striker (Hays) is also in the middle of a breakup with his longtime girlfriend Elaine (Hagerty).  Wouldn't you know it?  She's a flight attendant on the flight and sits beside him in the cockpit.  Can the two hash out their differences while trying to navigate the plane through rough weather and receiving instructions from the ground crew?   Oh, but why am I discussing the plot anyway?   Airplane! is about its litany of verbal and sight gags thrown so fast and often at the viewer that the viewer may feel the need to duck.   Many of them work, some not as much, but the sheer volume is ambitious and infectious.

The actors play the material straight, even when satirizing some of their previous work.   Leslie Nielsen, who later re-teamed with writer/directors Abrahams and the Zuckers on Police Squad! and the Naked Gun movies, soon made a second career out of these roles.   If the actors even attempted to play these roles as anything but serious, the effect would be lost.   When you're appearing in a movie in which one of the jokes involves shit literally hitting the fan instead of figuratively, then what could you possibly add to your performance which would top that?   Nothing.   Actually, I must correct myself.  One actor (Stucker), who plays a member of the Chicago ground crew, nearly leaps around the scenery with boundless energy and rips off one funny line after another.   Many of his lines weren't scripted, but in a movie like Airplane! that's par for the course.