Airplane! - 1980
Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop logging comedies...
Air-freaking-plane! Witness the rise of the un-holy trinity of Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker. The parody kings who grew up together, cut their teeth on a little sketch comedy called Kentucky Fried Movie, and gave us separately or together The Naked Gun films, the Major League and Hot Shots! franchises and all sorts of other irreverent fare. We could do a deep dive into these men's distinctive go-to's - slapstick action, breaking the fourth wall, sight gags, and of course a re-telling of sequences from classic Hollywood cinema (more on this in a moment). But, to my mind, Airplane! is far and away the best of the lot, so I'd like to keep our focus honed in on this masterpiece. (Besides, it has all of those elements anyway).
I'll start, like I often do, by posing a question. Is this the greatest comedy of all-time? While you ponder the query...here is my strongest argument FOR it. In order to construct my case, I'll need to borrow an analogy from the game of basketball. See, to my mind, Airplane! is a total "volume shooter." It may not drain every shot it takes, but it's tossing so many up there that a whole horde are bound to fall. Or, to use boxing, it doesn't land every punch it throws, but some are total haymakers. So, if you don't like the smoking plane ticket or dashboard button that reads "A Little Too Hot," just wait. Girl scouts are about to throw down in a dive bar and Lloyd Bridges will soon be upside down sniffing glue.
Bottom line, this film may contain more jokes per minute than any in history. And there are a wide variety of them. ZAZ know their history. They send up From Here to Eternity by nearly drowning the body-locked lovers in the surf. The dramatic score highlights dozens of disaster pictures of yesteryear. The Roger, Victor, vector, Oveur sketch is just pure nostalgic waves of Abbott and Costello. The sight gags are even MORE effective. The crew dragging Jabbar down the aisle after his goggles and Lakers jersey suddenly appear on his hulking frame is only one example in a sea.
Or how about Robert Stack standing in front of what appears to be a mirror before striding right through into the next room? Discerning viewers will know it well - that's ripped right out of a Marx Bros. flick. (And, to illustrate my joke variety point further, if you're not feeling that one, the assistant is getting physically mauled in the background by a dog). The movie is just brilliant in ways it never should have been. The dregs dancing disco. The suicide victims deciding to end it all rather than listen to one more plaintive "song" from the addled Striker. The group lining up to smack the hysteria out of a woman with increasing instruments of blunt force trauma. I haven't even talked about Leslie Nielsen and all the grammatical puns.
I could keep going, but at this point, I'd just be conducting a table read. I should mention, before parting, that this one isn't particularly politically correct. Put succinctly, there's no way this one gets made today. The little girl liking coffee black "like [her] men" hasn't aged well. Neither has the Jewish Sports Legends leaflet, and I don't think I even need mention how Captain Oveur's creepy pedophilic vibes would scan today. But I guess that's my point. These bits are hilarious! Hate the jive talk sequence if you must (my uncle used to quote it to me LINE FOR LINE), but those two men and Mrs. Beaver is all-time stuff.
I realize I'm not the one who gets to decide if this material is offensive or not, but personally I think comedy is one of the last bastion's of original thought and free speech. We're losing even that today. If you're not for these things, probably skip Airplane! But if you are, then give this one it's 82 minutes in the sun. By the end you may very well be pondering yourself if it's the greatest.
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