Airplane!
If a movie comedy exists with a higher laugh-to-minute ratio than “Airplane!,” I am not aware of it. Watching it with my mother, it was refreshing to see her fully engaged with the gags, remembering certain ones coming up, and laughing all the way through the 88 minutes; it’s one of my favorite recent moviewatching experiences with her. That’s not why I love it, though because there are times when she struggles with her memory, with things that used to be second nature to her, experiences like this one are few and far between, and will be cherished.
I have never seen “Airport” or “Zero Hour” or any of the ’70s disaster movies writers-directors David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker- known from here on out as ZAZ- are parodying with their tale of a man (traumatized Air Force pilot Ted Striker, played by Robert Hays) trying to win back the love of his life (stewardess Elaine, played by Julie Hagerty) while the plane they are on is overrun by food poisoning, leading Striker back into the pilot’s seat. Does it even matter, at this point? “Airplane!” is more famous than any of them, and that’s not just because it nails every absurdity of that genre in every scene. From the very opening, ZAZ set the template for another genre, the movie parody, that Mel Brooks really started to elevate with “Young Frankenstein” and “High Anxiety,” for the next 40 years. Nobody else has come close to nailing what they accomplish here.
Discussing “Airplane!” in any way would normally devolve into simply name-checking your favorite gags, whether it’s the dueling intercom voices at the beginning, “Don’t call me Shirley,” the flashbacks by Striker that drive people to suicide, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as a co-pilot, Peter Graves asking Joey increasingly uncomfortable questions, the incomprehensible Jive, the song for a sick passenger, and how it nearly kills her, and Kramer fighting his way through a terminal of pamphlet pushers. And that doesn’t even scratch the surface. Personally, any moment with Stephen Stucker as Johnny (“And Leon is getting LARGER!”), the inflatable autopilot, and Striker’s increasingly depressing flashbacks, and the reactions they illicit, are tops for me. But that still leaves out Leslie Nielsen’s “Win one for the Zipper” speech, “Jim never vomits at home,” and the great Lloyd Bridges, and how he picked the wrong week to quit doing a Hell of a lot of stuff. You see what I mean?
Part of the reason “Airplane!” remains a stone-cold comedy classic, however, is not just the ridiculous proficiency ZAZ show in comedic timing and rhythm, but how they genuinely wrote characters for these actors. We actually care about Ted and Elaine getting back together, and those flashbacks just add meat to the bones. Nielsen’s doctor may have trapped him in a dry comedic persona for the rest of his career, but behind the straight-faced manner is someone taking his job seriously, which is part of why he basically only worked successfully in his other primary collaborations with ZAZ- “Police Squad” and the “Naked Gun” movies and nowhere else. The dynamic between Robert Stack’s Kramer and Striker is etched quickly, and played to hilariously as they struggle to get the plane down. And we learn little details about passengers, crew on the airplane and airport crew alike that give us a full idea of who people are, even as they crack us the Hell up. Forty years later, I still find myself laughing my ass off.
I did not have a usual moviewatching life as a kid. I basically watched movies that my parents, and my mother, wanted to watch. That included “Star Wars,” “Jaws,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and other escapist fare, but also comedies like “Young Frankenstein,” “Arsenic and Old Lace” and yes, “Airplane!”. (It did not include Disney or a whole lot of genuine kid-friendly movies, and when it did, it was often on the PG, or PG-13 side of things.) I will always be grateful for my mother for that early movie experience. As odd as it could be, as many blindspots as it led to, it was what shaped me into the movie lover I am today. It was a pleasure being reminded of that watching this classic again with her.
