Classic Review: Airplane! (1980)

Airplane is a silly comedy with a juvenile sensibility, that gains most of its entertainment value from how authentically it recreates the look and feel of 1970s disaster movies. That genre had a stronghold on American audiences for about a decade, and one would be hard-pressed to find pieces of entertainment that have aged more poorly. They all featured flat visuals, unconvincingly designed sets, ageing movie stars who were well past their sell-by dates, blandly attractive matinee idols, who had a brief ‘moment’ before fading into obscurity, and frustratingly generic screenplays. As somebody who has suffered through Airport, The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, one can’t help but develop a certain fear of this genre. Upon recovering from a bout of momentary hysteria, the film weaponized a personal hatred of disaster movies before somewhat redeeming itself by pointing out the sexism and racism that were endemic to the genre. 

Airplane saw Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker adapt the screenplay from Zero Hour!, a completely serious 1950s drama and insert their own humorous touches into certain scenes. The plot centrally deals with a disastrous flight jeopardized by most of the passengers suffering from food poisoning and both of the pilots falling ill. Vietnam War veteran Ted Striker (Hays) eventually decides to land the plane while mostly focusing on regaining the love of flight attendant Elaine Dickinson (Hagerty). They dated during the war, but later broke up after his trauma became too much to bear. As the pressure mounts, it is up to Doctor Rumack (Nielsen) and Rex Kramer (Robert Stack) to coach Striker through this experience. As he gains control over the plane, he also makes his way back into Dickinson’s heart. 

The screenwriters find clever ways to mock Airport by shamelessly pandering to the reactionary beliefs that middle class audiences held during this period. While radical, challenging content was making its way into hits like An Unmarried Woman and Sunday Bloody Sunday, disaster films offered an opportunity to remember the good ole days. For example, Airport centered two older male characters who were cheating on their wives with much younger mistresses and proving that they knew more than those young whippersnappers who were trying to steal their jobs. They encouraged audience members to feel bad for people who were neglecting their family members in order to have sex with young women. The concerned wives of Dean Martin and Burt Lancaster were presented as braying and overly controlling, simply for wanting their husbands to spend some time with them. On the other hand, their mistresses were largely subservient doormats who appeared in various stages of undress in every scene they were in. Rather than embracing the feminism that was sweeping the nation, these films wanted to squarely place women in boxes and restrict them to serving as set dressing in scenes that involved big, tough men discussing scientific mumbo jumbo. 

The actors succeed in parodying the hypothetical performances given by stars like Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine and Steve McQueen in this genre which proved to be Airplane ’s greatest asset. Hagerty shines as the Jacqueline Bisset analogue, with her wide-eyed innocence and general ditziness. She has a knack for overplaying moments to a degree where it becomes impossible not to embrace the farcicality of the situations that she finds herself in. Her character has been deliberately written as a dull, colorless romantic lead, but she undoubtedly is in on the joke. Nielsen, Stack and Graves play everything with a straight face and their line readings are so stiff that one can’t take their characters seriously. They get to the root of the problem with most male action heroes, as stars are so desperate to appear stoic, unemotional and intense, that they end up pushing it too far and look foolish. These performances remain funny, even when the gags frequently seem crass, vulgar and far too obvious. 

As much as this accurately pinpoints the flaws of Airport, it’s hard to consider Airplane as consistently hilarious. The hit and miss ratio of its humor, fell down on the wrong side. For every random sight gag that did elicit a chuckle, there were about a dozen slapstick jokes that were eyeroll worthy. The film feels like a television sketch idea stretched out over the length of a feature film, and it does occasionally run out of creativity.

In the end, Airplane may have been sharper if it had just been a twenty-minute Saturday Night Live spoof. 

still courtesy of Paramount Pictures

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Zita Short

I am passionate about screwball comedies from the 1930s and certain actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I’ll aim to review new Netflix releases and write features, so expect a lot of romantic comedies and cult favourites.