Where does one start when writing a review for a film like Airplane? The film, harbouring little to no plot, is hardly concerned with making an astute or sophisticated comment on humanity. Its goal is much simpler. The filmmakers want a punching bag, and directors James Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker use airplanes to create a parody on all that we have come to love and hate about flying.
Ted Striker ( Robert Hayes) has just broken up with his girlfriend Elaine Dickinson ( Julie Hagerty) and boards the plane she is on in order to win back her affection. That is the entire plot with a Karen Black, Airport ’75 rescue subplot thrown into the mix.
The film opens with a parody of Jaws, showing a plane’s tail gliding through clouds. The movie is malicious and completely absurd. We never spend more than a minute or so with a particular scene. The little time we do spend with these characters presents us with some of the most jaded humour since the heyday of W.C. Fields. It’s as if the movie is passing us by on a conveyor belt, slapping us with one great joke after another. Take the sophisticated little boy who sits next to the sophisticated little girl. He offers her a cup of coffee and then asks her if she wants milk. She says, “I take it black, like my men.”
Captain Oveur’s sexually inappropriate verbiage, uttered around a little boy eager to see the cockpit, is also a hoot. He bombards the boy with ridiculous lines as “have you ever seen a grown man naked?” We also get great political zingers, like one that uses Anita Bryant as a punch line. But if I had to choose my favourite gag in the film (aside from the coke-snorting granny), it would have to be the mother whose internal thoughts are revealed to us. When asked for a second cup of coffee, the woman’s husband accepts. The woman is distraught, an inner monologue detailing how her husband never has a second cup of coffee when they are at home. Minutes later, when the plane meets horrible turbulence, the husband is continuously throwing up into a small bag. He blames it on the coffee and the woman is even more mortified, her inner monologue detailing how her husband never vomits at home. Absolutely precious.
The least comical aspects of the film (arguably, the repetitive abuse of religious zealots) fail because the filmmakers are focusing their scorn on something too specific. Another example is the repetitive play on words when airplane jargon is linked to Captain Oveur. But these are minor qualms, because Airplane! is, without question, a comedic masterpiece that takes a timeless tradition and mocks it to the heavens. Simple to the bone, but gut-wrenchingly funny.
