Airplane! – Review

High above the skies in a sea of clouds and… cue the Jaws theme to match the visible tailfin. Flying through is a plane sweeping across the screen. On the ground, there is no stopping in the red zone. Or was it the white zone? Which zone is for stopping and loading?! Inside the airport, people shuffle to their flights, and remove metal for the scanner, like arms and legs.

Airplane! is a very solid spoof even if you have not seen the films it is teasing. The humor remains relatively timeless as the gags and jokes are pretty clever and continue to bring laughs even in the modern age. The liens are delivered straight up without irony despite the actual scene context or what the words mean, and the actors nail the important deliveries.

As an airplane nose blasts into the airport waiting area, the movie is off to an exciting start. Ex-army pilot Ted Stryker (Hays) promises stewardess Elaine Dickinson (Hagerty) things will be different if she gives him another chance. The problem is she can’t live with a man she doesn’t respect. Yowzaaa. Can he ever recover from that burn??

Next, Captain Clarence Oveur (Graves) gets a call about a heart transplant patient on his flight: a little girl. Additional characters and sub plots slowly shuffle into the plane seats while co-pilot Roger Murdock (Abdul-Jabbar) joins Victor Basta and Clarence Oveur on the bridge. Tensions mount as Ted faces his plane fears and joins the flight to Chicago, as well as spying Elaine giving a pillow to someone in need.

Ted chooses the smoking section because Jesus Christ that was a thing on airplanes once. The real plot eventually shuffles out, but it doesn’t matter because this is a spoof comedy and there you go. Oveur, over. Grab the latest issue of Nun’s Life and join the flight. Lay ‘em down, and smack ‘em mack ‘em.