Apertem os Cintos, o Piloto Sumiu

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)

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.

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!

I don't know why this only shows a review of 7.7. I'd give this an 8, at least. Possibly a 9. This movie has more jokes & gags every 2 minutes than most comedies have in their entire feature. There's a joke every few seconds. It's brilliant. Hilarious. Witty & sometimes just visually ridiculous. The casting is wonderful especially from the spot-on Leslie Neilson. This was made in 1980, & here I am watching this 42 years later & it's still as good now as it was then.

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.