User Reviews

"Airplane!" is, was and always shall be the master of spoof movies. It is single-handedly responsible for literally inventing a sub-genre of comedy. It is the ultimate Silly Movie. A satire of the disaster movies of the 1970s, particularly the "Airport" series, nothing makes sense and it doesn't need to. There's no real plot. Just laughs - and plenty of 'em.

It was helmed by the ZAZ trio (Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker), whose dedication to making the audience laugh is surprisingly adamant. Recent spoofs may have left a bad aftertaste in your mouth, but it seems to be a universal agreement: "Airplane" is the funniest film of its genre ever made. (Closely followed by "The Naked Gun" - also penned by the ZAZ trio - perhaps.)

The plot: Ted Striker (Robert Hays) is a war veteran-turned-cab-driver who decides to chase after his girlfriend, an airline stewardess named Elaine (Julie Hagerty), who has dumped him in order to pursue a new life. Right before her plane takes off, Ted climbs aboard, hitching a ride in order to woo her back into a relationship again.

When the aircraft is in midflight, both pilots become very ill after eating their meals. Eventually many passengers begin to show symptoms of a rare disease, apparently transmitted by the food. Onboard, Dr. Rumack (Leslie Nielsen) takes care of the sick passengers as Ted - an ex-fighter pilot from the war - decides to try and land the plane. If he messes up they will all die, and in a particularly funny scene, the pressure becomes so unbearable that he begins to literally sweat gallons in the cockpit.

That is essentially all the film is about, but most of its duration is spent cracking jokes. Spoof films are entirely different from other movies because normally we would criticize a film if it considered its plot to be the least important element. Not so here. This is a truly brainless piece of celluloid - a movie that doesn't try to be anything that it isn't. From the opening credits - that cleverly spoof "JAWS" - to the closing we realize that this is an altogether unique film going experience.

The movie's biggest laughs come through unexpected flashbacks, such as when Ted remembers where he first met Elaine in a crummy bar ("...it was worse than Detroit..."), and begins to disco-dance a la John Travolta from "Saturday Night Fever" (complete with Bee Gees soundtrack blaring in the background and the famous Travolta pose). Then, later, we are taken back to when Ted was hospitalized after the war, and finds out that he was responsible for the death of six men. "Seven, actually," he is informed, which adds to the pain of the moment for him.

Though this movie is very funny, many jokes misfire. If you're not pop culture savvy and you don't remember Mrs. Cleaver from TV's "Leave it to Beaver", the humor is going to go over your head. But unlike many comedies, "Airplane!" offers something unique for each person. I know that as a film lover, I picked up on many movie in-jokes that some people might not recognize. And then there were the gags that I first missed but picked up after a second viewing, or when someone explained them to me, or both. And I'm sure there are many yet that I'm not aware of. It seems that every time I watch it, there's something else to laugh at that I missed previously.

"Airplane!" not only was a huge success in 1980 (the year of its release), spinning off a horde of imitators and one sequel - it was also responsible for crowning Leslie Nielsen "The King of Spoof." Prior to "Airplane!" Nielsen had been a veteran of more serious productions, stemming back to playing cowboys on "The Mickey Mouse Club" and other embarrassing attempts at acting. However, Nielsen later claimed that he had always wanted to do a comedy, even when he first started acting seriously with projects such as the classic "Forbidden Planet" (one of the best science-fiction films ever made). He later reunited with the ZAZ trio for "The Naked Gun" trilogy, appeared in similar spoof films over the years such as "Wrongfully Accused" and "Scary Movie 3," and had his iconic comedy shtick ripped off by many screen veterans - most noticeably by George Gaynes in the unbearable "Police Academy" (1984).

When it comes down to a single evaluation, "Airplane" is simply the best spoof film ever made. It's like a MAD Magazine parody come to life. There are the occasional misfires, but unlike many other spoof film imitators, this one contains far more hits. The deadpan acting is genius and everything else fits into place, resulting in what may arguably be one of the absolute funniest films ever conceived and put on the big screen. And if you decide to watch the movie, don't blink - you might miss a gag or two. The "Police Academies" will come and go but "Airplane!" will never be forgotten.

Disaster films were the rage in the 1970s. As the decade wore on the films got even more star studded and the stakes get higher. The scripts flabbier and our square jawed heroes getting even more po faced with each impending disaster.

Surely this could not continue and after Airplane it did not. It burst the disaster film bubble and stop calling me Shirley!

Airplane with its deadpan humour, jokes with double meanings and risqué gags. Both visual and spoken broke the mould when it came to comedy pastiche movies.

Even more than 30 years later it entices a new generation even though some of the topical references (Gerald Ford, Ethel Merman) might be meaningless to many new viewers.

The real beauty of Airplane was getting solid actors to play their part straight. Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack and Leslie Nielsen shine in their roles, totally ignoring the mayhem around them.

For Neilsen a man known for playing solid drama roles, it gave him a lucrative extension in his career as a slapstick comedy actor.

Airplane is just plane crazy.

I do like comedy and spoof movies, and Airplane! is one of the best examples of the genre. The film still holds up well after all these years, with skillful enough camera work, and the direction is smart. The story is simple but well-paced and fun, while the film's cast is a distinguished one. Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty are great leads, and Peter Graves, Robert Stack and Lloyd Bridges look as though they are also having a whale of a time. But I will always remember this film for the late Leslie Nielson, whose comic timing is just genius, and the "don't call me Shirley" is one of comedy's most memorable and quotable moments. Where Airplane! succeeds most is in its humour. The script is brilliant and wickedly funny with very accurate spoofs and purposefully cringe-inducing puns that make me laugh anyway, and there are some inspired sight gags as well. All in all, a classic and how to do a spoof. 10/10 Bethany Cox

It is my understanding that there are still a few people in the world that haven't seen "Airplane!" yet.

Those people probably are still waiting for electricity, indoor plumbing and all the other great advances in humanity, too.

To see "Airplane!" is to take part in the great move to subvert all self-importance in movies, which this film does with great relish (and plenty of corn).

You get a chance to see such "serious" actors as Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack and Leslie Nielsen subvert themselves and their own personnae into near oblivion thanks to the writing/directing team of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker. Not to mention visual and verbal send-ups of darn near every movie that ever took place in the air, and a few that didn't, but should have.

Kudos to Leslie Nielsen, who with this movie gave himself the greatest reinvention of any actor this century. At one time, he was the very model of stoic sensibility.

I swear. Seriously.

A looooong time ago.

Ten stars. A laugh riot.

And I STILL think this would make a great in-flight movie.

A dose of food poisoning incapacitates the pilots of an airliner and an ex-military flyer is called upon to save the day.

This is one of my favourite movies of all time.

It is rare for a feature length comedy to sustain the humour for the duration of the running time, but Airplane does it with an incredibly funny script that mixes entertaining characters, brilliant dialogue and hilarious visuals.

The plot is a remake of the 1957 movie 'Zero Hour' and uses the drama associated with a potential airline disaster to generate laughs with deadpan parody, silliness and random, unexpected punchlines.

For me there are so many memorable sight-gags and quotable one-liners from numerous characters that it is impossible to pick a favourite. Scenes that still make me laugh as much today as I did when I first saw them as a child in the 1980s include the flashback sequences to Ted and Elaine's romantic encounters, everything that happens in air traffic control, and every word that come out of Leslie Neilson's mouth.

All performances are outstanding, particularly Neilson, Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, Peter Graves, Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Stephen Stucker, and Barbara Billingsley.

The production values are exceptionally good, with as much attention to detail given to the disaster movie elements of the production as the humour. Simple practical effects are used to give the appearance of a stricken airliner and nothing makes it look obviously fake (other than the fact it's all played for jokes).

Airplane has not dated in my eyes and I never tire of watching it. However, I appreciate comedy is very much in the eye of the beholder and what is funny to me might not be as much to others.

Quite simply one of the best laugh-out-loud movies ever made. The unapologetic Dad jokes and dry satire are eternally enjoyable and the movie has not lost any of it's bite over the years. Eminently quotable and amongst the best in its class.

Unfortunately, Airplane! has been, for me, one of those comedies that I have seen so many times in the video store that its appeal has gradually worn down to almost nothing, resulting in a total absence of interest in renting it. I eventually watched it one day because I worked at the video store and could rent movies for free, and was continuing on my desperate attempt to watch every movie in the store (a goal which continues to this day, although by now I've come to realize that it's never going to happen). During my quest, by the way, I also saw the old 1970 film Airport, probably ten years after having seen parts of Airplane!, and realized that this is one of the many movies that inspired Airplane!

In general, I'm a little cautious about movies that have exclamation points in the titles, but Airplane! is without a doubt one of the funniest movies ever made. Consider, for example, those little montages that studios sometimes put together and put at the beginning of movies when they come out on videotape, honoring the great movies that the studio has made in the past. They show lots of memorable clips from their old movies (and I always write all of these titles down, determined to watch them all, and then promptly lose the list that I made) to remind you how great they are. I had a good time watching Airplane! and picking out how many scenes are in the movie that can and do go into those memorable montages.

Airplane! is made up of a series of hilarious scenes that string together a thin shoestring plot, which ironically speaks in the movie's defense. In general, movies with weak stories that are driven along by comedic stunts and pranks and whatnot tend to be pretty weak, but Airplane! is not driven by stunts to cover a weak story as much as the quality of the stunts and the slapstick comedy is so good that they overshadow everything else. It's interesting to watch someone like Robert Stack so many years ago and see that he looked and talked exactly like he did in Unsolved Mysteries so many years later, a show the seriousness of which boggles the mind, given that it's hosted by someone who did so well in a movie like this one.

My favorite thing about this movie is, obviously, the huge amount of sound bytes that comes from it, just the cleverness of the way it was written and put together. You have the main character's `drinking problem,' the airport announcers (`Listen, Betty, don't start up with your white zone sh*t again…'), the stress of the people investigating the situation on the plane (`Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking/drinking/amphetamines.'), the plays on words (`There's a problem at the control tower!' `What is it?' `It's the big tower where the air traffic controllers talk to the planes.'), that one airport employee who was suspiciously bubbly and excited throughout the entire movie (while providing some of its best comedy), and then of course were the situational gags, such as Robert Stack pulling off his sunglasses to reveal another pair underneath (arguably the most famous scene in the entire film).

This is a movie where a list like this could go on and on, and I'm sure if you go to the memorable quotes page on the IMDb you'll find a gigantic list of hilarious quotes from the movie there. It is no secret that this is something of a childish and immature comedy, but it is smartly written and has so many great scenes and bits of dialogue that it's one of those rare movies that makes you want to take notes so you won't forget a lot of the lines. It is one of the earlier versions of Leslie Nielsen's spoofs, a genre in itself which went on to tremendous success with lots of great (and some not so great) spoofs to follow.

Still one of funniest spoof movies ever made, Airplane is one of the first and one of the best around.

Hot Shots, Loaded Weapon even Naked Gun have tried to follow in its footsteps, but they have failed to hit the mark. That's not to say that they are bad movies, just that its difficult to follow a movie of this calibre.

Spoof movies definitely have there place in everyone's collection, but this is probably the best you'll ever see in the genre, if you have never seen it and you fancy a laugh, I can't recommend a better film, even though it has dated; it's still hilarious 9/10

This movie is parody of 70s big hit drama Airport and this is the best parody one may ever see. It was full of gags and funny moments filled with drama. The comedy was natural and doesn't seem forced. Even after being 40+ years old movie, it makes you laugh more than the recent comedy movies which work on forced comedy.

The story, direction, execution, pacing, acting, everything was as per the script. Everything was at the point and hands off to the writers and director for the work they did.

Overall, it is a good parody movie which I loved watching and it was entertaining to watch. Would recommend it to everyone.

This film could have derailed the careers of everyone involved. For example, people under 40 may not even know that until this movie, Leslie Nielsen was strictly a serious actor in dramas both on TV and in film. Many may watch 1973's"Poseidon Adventure" for the first time today and keep waiting for Nielson - as the captain of the doomed ship - to get up from the dining room table wearing just his heart-covered underwear below the waist, or for him to make that first clueless remark. He never does. But from this film onward, he was strictly a comic actor and a good one. Quite a sharp turn for age 55.

Just think how tight a line you have to walk with such silliness in order to be brilliant versus inane. What could have easily been the first winner of the Razzie Worst Picture award instead was the first major film of its genre and over the last 30 years has inspired some creative as well as mundane imitators. To understand the film's success you have to look at the time in which it was made - late 70's early 80's. The sarcasm of the post-Watergate era in which everything is fair game for ridicule started on TV with Saturday Night Live, and first appeared on the big screen with "Kentucky Fried Movie", but this was the first and best big-budget attempt at such material.

In addition to being the beginning of an era, it is sadly the end of one - one in which we all didn't take ourselves quite so seriously. There is no way today that you could make a movie where people are "speaking jive" as though it were a foreign language or where an Air Israel plane is shown complete with kosher beard. There would be an outcry followed by Congressional hearings. In 1980, there was still a perspective that making fun of certain perceptions and admitting that they are there is a better approach to bringing us all together than just ignoring them and sweeping them under the rug. There's yet another good approach to bringing people together - laughs, of which this film is full.

Just a word of caution - if you've never seen any of the serious airplane disaster movies that preceded this one such as the Airport movies of the 1970's or the 1950's film "High and the Mighty", this film will ruin them for you. They all become comedies. Thus you might want to see them before you see Airplane - or if you want to laugh some more, see Airplane first.

Elaine (Julie Hagerty) is a flight attendant. She breaks up with Ted Striker (Robert Hays) who can't get over the war. He can't take it and follows onto her flight. When the flight crew gets food poisoning, surely Ted could save the day.

Abrahams and Zucker have created the iconic satire of a disaster movie. It's a great take on a genre so popular at that time. It's a constant stream of jokes. There isn't any time in between to allow the jokes to hit. That's the point. Just when a joke hits you, the next joke is already on the way. There is no time to take a breath. This constant stream of jokes provide the blueprints for this genre for years to come. I'm not going to list the countless jokes here. There are too many hilarious moments. Just watch the movie.

In a tense moment where Ted Striker (Robert Hays) needs to land an airplane where the pilots (Peter Graves and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) have fallen sick, and several passengers need to get off the airplane for various reasons, all Striker can think to himself (with an echo in his mind, of course) is "I've got to concentrate... concentrate... concentrate... I've got to concentrate... concentrate... concentrate... Hello?... hello... hello... Echo... echo... echo... Pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon... Manny Mota... Mota... Mota..." That pretty much sums up the seriousness of Airplane!, the lampoon of the 1970s Airport movies, and pretty much every other disaster movie pumped out by Hollywood. The same guys who pieced together the Naked Gun movies write and direct this silly movie. Most of the jokes need to be seen to be properly experienced, the first rate actors are what brings the laughs. Robert Stack plays it straight, over-the-top straight, as a problem solver for the airline who happens to wear 2 pairs of sunglasses at all times. Stack's comedic timing and deadpan delivery bring out some of the biggest laughs of the film. Lloyd Bridges is the over-worked, over-stressed traffic controller who has picked the wrong week to stop drinking, smoking, and sniffing glue. And Leslie Neilson plays a doctor who has an acute sense for the obvious, surely one who could save the passengers and airline crew if they land safely, just don't call him Shirley. A few cheap laughs, a few misses, but over all, a pretty funny movie. If you like The Naked Gun, you'll like Airplane!

This is voted as one of the funniest comedies of all time, and it deserves that honor! The film is filled with hilarious gags! Sure, in every one of these campy farces, there's usually a few gags that are way too silly. In this case, it was the "drinking problem" gag and that annoying gay man who works on Lloyd Bridges' staff. But when I can actually count on my hand how many gags didn't work, that's a good sign. The majority of the film sent me into a frenzy of laughter! One of my favorites is when the blow-up auto-pilot runs out of air and Julie Hagerty blows it back up again. You'll have to see the movie to find out why it was so hilarious! I also got a great kick out of the running gag in which every passenger who listens to Robert Hays ends up killing themselves. This is definitely the Zuckers and Abrahams in top form! Unfortunately, I haven't seen a great spoof in years. The "Scary Movie" films were pretty good, but incredibly lewd and crude. And obviously the Zuckers and Abrahams have much better eyes for satire than the Wayans brothers. I caught "Scary Movie" on cable and watched it a second time, and I didn't laugh nearly as many times as I did the first time. I can watch "Airplane" 200 times and still laugh like there's no tomorrow! The film was made back when comedies didn't go strictly for sex and toilet gags to make an audience laugh. This was back when writers used to employ this quality called "wit." "Kentucky Fried Movie" had some racy gags, but even those were witty for the most part. There is a certain rhythm in every gag that helps make the film work. For example, Lloyd Bridges starts out by saying "I think I picked the wrong day to quit smoking." Then he says he picked the wrong day to quit drinking. And when he finally says "I picked the wrong day to quit amphetamines," I was laughing my head off! So basically, you watch a film like this and feel the urge to mail a copy of the video to the Wayans Brothers and whatever crackheads wrote "Not Another Teen Movie," along with a note saying "THIS is how to make a spoof!"

There are so many other gags worth mentioning, including the "Saturday Night Fever" sendup, which is definitely one of the best comic moments caught on film! That scene also contains my favorite line: "I told the guy next to me to pinch me to make sure I wasn't dreaming." After that voice-over, we see the guy next to Robert Hays repulsed and walking away from him. Another great example of perfect comic timing and delivery!

If you want to get some authentic belly laughs--I'm not talking chuckles, but actual LAUGHS!--you must check out "Airplane." Trust me, movies don't get much more original or funny than this!

My score: 9 (out of 10)

Parodies or Spoofs are one particular segment that I have rarely got the opportunity to venture into. Partly due to the comparative absence of such features in the current scenario where black comedies are the talk of the town.

Nevertheless, I have made my decision to explore this relatively uncharted territory after watching some hilarious clips that I found on Reddit last week and I'm glad I listened to my conscience.

It is extremely slapsticky but at the same time, the writing oozes brilliance. It's witty, it's clever and it knows how and when to deliver the lines. Now, for some of you the performances may come across as hammy, a bit over-the-top, but as this was all intentional, it all come to be just fine. Not all jokes land but the ones that did lay the foundation for some comedic golds.

Rumack: Captain, how soon can you land?

Captain Oveur: I can't tell.

Rumack: You can tell me. I'm a doctor.

Captain Oveur: No. I mean I'm just not sure.

Rumack: Well, can't you take a guess?

Captain Oveur: Well, not for another two hours.

Rumack: You can't take a guess for another two hours?

Airplane is simply the funniest movie of all time. It handles the broad range of parody, satire, and plain silliness expertly, and has some of the greatest one-liners and sight gags ever put in a movie. Sure some of the jokes are dated, but great comedies (especially parodies) exist in the moment, and you have to expect that. The fact is, enough jokes hit the bullseye that it really is one of those rare movies where you are laughing constantly. I am, at least. This movie launched Leslie Nielsen's career as a comedy actor, although he still hasn't made anything this good (Naked Gun comes closest, but it's still light years away from this). Do any movies come close to hitting the zenith that this one does? "Young Frankenstein" comes close, but even the best Mel Brooks film doesn't top this. There has simply never been a funnier movie than "Airplane!" and for that, it deserves to be considered one of the greatest MOVIES of all time (I know for many people that's a stretch, but I stand by it; I've been watching it my whole life and there's still nothing I flat-out enjoy watching more).

By now, everyone must know about "Airplane!". A spoof of the disaster movies of the 1970s replete with every gag imaginable. Whether it's the announcers arguing over the red zones and white zones, the obnoxious solicitors, the jumping artificial heart, the oddly named crew, the automatic pilot, or the various media sources around the world, the goofiness just keeps on coming. The relationship between Ted Striker (Robert Hays) and Elaine Dickinson (Julie Hagerty) basically takes a back seat to the outlandish one-liners ("We have to get this woman to a hospital." "A hospital? What is it?" "It's a big building with patients, but that's not important now.") If you ask me, humor doesn't have to reflect the real world; a bunch of wacko gags works just fine. And that's just what "Airplane!" is. I guess that you could say that Leslie Nielsen (himself a veteran of "The Poseidon Adventure", a typical disaster flick) was getting honed for the "Naked Gun" movies.

The Z-A-Z team's Airplane! is probably one of the most hilarious films ever. Surely it belongs a place in film history (and don't call me surely) as a comedy that brings parody, racial comedy, sexual comedy, and just plain old gags into one big explosion of hilarity. The plot has all the elements to become a horrible thrill movie, but instead, angles itself into a brilliant comedy that is quote-able, admirable, and quite cool. "At times like this it makes me wish I hadn't given up snorting cocaine." And I agree.

When it comes to parodies, the ZAZ (Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker) team remains the most known name associated with the genre. In fact, they're the men behind the best spoof in movie history, the priceless gag marathon called Airplane!.

This film has a ridiculously simple plot: on a flight to Chicago, several passengers get food poisoning. Among the victims is the pilot himself (Peter Graves). In order to avoid mass panic, a replacement must be found, and quickly. That replacement turns out to be Ted Striker (Robert Hays), a former war pilot who's on the plane to reconcile with his girlfriend Elaine. With some help, he must overcome his fears and get everyone back on the ground without a scratch.

If you read a plot summary such as the one I just wrote, you may think you're about to watch some kind of air-based thriller, with a romantic subplot. That's not the case. Despite the story's seriousness, Airplane! will make you grin for ages. From start to finish, we're offered all kinds of gags, both visual (the balloon autopilot) and aural ("Surely you can't be serious!" "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley."). And guess what? You'll have a great time even if you haven't seen the movies which are being made fun of (in this case, the Airport series, but also, in the fantastic opening sequence, Jaws).

The jokes are flawless, exactly like the actors delivering them. Every single character is granted a moment in the spotlight, and that moment is successfully exploited. Hays is pitch-perfect right from the beginning as the naive hero driven by love, a pure, wonderful love, whose birth is shown to us in the movie's best scene, a hilarious flashback which mocks Saturday Night Fever (even my mother, who doesn't usually like this kind of comedy, enjoyed that sequence). The other notable presence is ZAZ regular Leslie Nielsen, "the Laurence Olivier of spoofs" (Roger Ebert's words), who makes his comedy debut playing the consistently calm and witty Dr. Rumack (when he first learns the passengers got ill by eating fish, he remarks "Oh yes, I had the lasagna").

More than twenty years have passed, but Airplane! has aged surprisingly well, and keeps entertaining viewers all over the world. Lovers of comedy, make no mistake: this is the spoof to rule them all. Watch it, and you will experience 88 minutes of non-stop, genuine fun. Arguably the funniest film of the '80s.

I got to say, I was really impressed with the writing and creativity of this movie, even though the premise is pretty simple. There's a lot of chaos and randomness in this movie but it's on purpose and kind of a work of art. It might be a little old fashioned and a select couple of things don't hold up anymore, but you have to admire it for what it is and for the time that it came out! The cameos were fun to see and they made it so that there was a joke through the dialogue alone just about every few seconds which was pretty neat. My friend recommended this to me and I'm glad that I checked it out! If you have the right style of humor, you can enjoy and appreciate this one nonstop!

Very rarely does a film come out that is as truly brilliant as Airplane. It has everything that a comedy should have. The cast is fantastic, the jokes hilarious and almost constant.

One of the best things about Airplane that I have found is that the jokes are not all obvious, and because of this it has far more re-watchability than most comedies, as every time you watch it you pick up on more of the subtler jokes and background sight gags.

It is a film that manages to cater for almost all tastes in humour, from dry wit to slapstick via spoofery and dark humour. If you haven't seen this film you MUST watch it. This is one of those few films that everybody can enjoy. It's fairly rare to find a comedy the whole family can enjoy, most are either unsuitable for children or too childish for adults, but Airplane manages to find that balance where all ages can enjoy it.

In conclusion, if you have yet to see this film, watch it. If you have seen it, watch it again.