Seeing a commercial plane facing an emergency up at 30,000 feet gives viewers the chills. Not this one though! Airplane! by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker mocks the airplane disaster films and crash lands you in the valley of laughter. The exclamation mark (!) in the movie title is a hint.
The pilots in this parody of an aviation disaster are played by Peter Graves and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Both, along with several passengers, are knocked out by food poisoning after having fish for a meal onboard. Chaos breaks out among the people on the plane with the flight attendants (Julie Hagerty and Lorna Patterson) acting as crazy as the people in the cabin and those on the ground trying to help the troubled plane. One former military pilot (Robert Hays) who happens to be on the flight, is the last hope of them all to land safely.
Airplane! has endless laughter for the viewer because of its reckless disregard for sanity. From the opening sequence to the final shot, the movie crashes all bounds of normalcy and gives clichés no chance to escape its debris. Nothing and nobody is sacred in this disaster scenario – the people, their values and speech, the plane and its regulation, you name it.
For those studying films, particularly screenwriting, Airplane! illustrates how each scene is its own mini story, or skit, within the main plot. Whether it’s a flight attendant singing to the ill child onboard, her colleague trying to air up the inflatable dummy of a pilot, or emergency signs going off against smoking and sex in certain rows, scene after scene it’s reinforcement of the mood not to take anything seriously on this flight. Even the ultimate survival becomes a secondary concern for the viewer who can’t get a break from this absurdity.
Airplane! has some adult themes in many scenes so the PG rating on IMDb seems about right. This movie is for all parody-comedy fans but for those who have a fear of flying, you certainly don’t wanna miss it!
