Airplane!

UK Release Date. 15 August 1980
Certification. A
Running Time. 1 hour 28 mins
Director. Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker
Cast. Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Julie Hagerty, Robert Hays, Leslie Nielsen, Lorna Patterson.
Rating. 55%

Review.

What defines comedy?

Comedy is a deeply subjective; a personal experience, where the humour is shaped by the individual, and cultural and contextual factors. Indeed, context and timing are paramount as comedy often suffers at the hands of time. Films from 20, 10 or even 5 years ago have a tendency to age like milk left out on the kitchen countertop on a hot day. As a result of the incremental evolution of the comedy genre, there are few films considered universally funny without issues. Take Airplane! - the debut film from the creative outfit of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker - as an example.

Airplane! is the story of an ill-fated Trans American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Chicago whose crew are incapacitated by a bout of food poisoning. The plot parodies the airline disaster films of the 1970s - Airport, Airport 1975 and Airport ‘77. However, the storyline is lifted almost in its entirety from a little-known production from 1957, Zero Hour! starring Dana Andrews and Linda Darnell. I would defy anyone who has watched Airplane! to watch the theatrical trailer of Zero Hour! without an enormous grin on your face.

The principal characters, Ted Striker and Elaine Dickinson (played by Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty, respectively) are solid enough, but the masterstroke was the casting of Peter Graves (Captain Clarence Oveur), Lloyd Bridges (Steve McCroskey) and Leslie Nielsen (Dr Rumack). All three actors were specifically cast in these roles because none of them had appeared in a comedy film before.

What is perhaps most extraordinary, looking back at Airplane! is the tireless pursuit of laughter. Never before had a film displayed such a single-minded desire to elicit laughter, at the expense of absolutely everything else. Here was a film whose only reason for existence was to deliver jokes, and as many of them as possible - to pummel the audience into submission with a sheer overwhelming comedic onslaught. Each one is fired off in rapid succession, barely giving the audience time to recover from the last one. After 45 years, many of these jokes haven’t aged too well - not all are clever, not all are tasteful - but the delivery is on point every damn time.