Stars: Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Lloyd Bridges, Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves, Robert Stack, Cyril O'Reilly, Raymond Burr, William Shatner, Kent McCord

Director: Jim Abrahams

Summary: AIRPLANE! is the spoof comedy that set the gold standard for all that followed it. It takes shots at the slew of disaster movies that peppered cinemas in the 70s. When the passengers and crew of a jet are incapacitated due to food poisoning, a rogue pilot--who has a drinking problem and is afraid of flying--must co-operate with his ex-girlfriend turned stewardess to bring the plane to a safe landing. No disaster flick cliche is left un-roasted, and the musical score itself takes a less than reverent look at overly melodramatic compositions. In AIRPLANE 2, the wild and crazy crew is airborne again, and this time there's a mad bomber on board, the engines aren't working, and the angel of death keeps popping up in the cockpit. But worst of all, the flight attendants suddenly discover that they're completely out of coffee!

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Airplane!

The quintessential movie spoof that spawned an entire genre of parody films, the original Airplane! still holds up as one of the brightest comedic gems of the '80s, not to mention of cinema itself (it ranked in the top 5 of Entertainment Weekly's list of the 100 funniest movies ever made). The humour may be low and obvious at times, but the jokes keep coming at a rapid-fire clip and its targets--primarily the lesser lights of '70s cinema, from disco films to star-studded disaster epics--are more than worthy for send-up. If you've seen even one of the overblown Airport movies then you know the plot: the crew of a filled-to-capacity jetliner is wiped out and it's up to a plucky stewardess and a shell-shocked fighter pilot to land the plane. Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty are the heroes who have a history that includes a meet-cute à la Saturday Night Fever, a surf scene right out of From Here to Eternity, a Peace Corps trip to Africa to teach the natives the benefits of Tupperware and basketball, a war-ravaged recovery room with a G.I. who thinks he's Ethel Merman (a hilarious cameo)--and those are just the flashbacks! The jokes gleefully skirt the boundaries of bad taste (pilot Peter Graves to a juvenile cockpit visitor: "Joey, have you ever seen a grown man naked?"), with the high (low?) point being Hagerty's intimate involvement with the blow-up automatic pilot doll, but they'll have you rolling on the floor. The film launched the careers of collaborators Jim Abrahams (Big Business), David Zucker (Ruthless People), and Jerry Zucker (Ghost), as well as revitalised such B-movie actors as Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Robert Stack, and Leslie Nielsen, who built a second career on films like this. A vital part of any video collection. --Mark Englehart

Airplane 2

The 1982 sequel to Airplane! is basically more of the same class-clown ironies but with a more forced feeling to the jokes. In the first film, veterans such as Peter Graves, Robert Stack, and Lloyd Bridges were feeling their way through self-parody, and the air of experimentation was part of the fun. By this film, however, everybody knows what's up, and the assuredness of new cast members Raymond Burr, William Shatner, and Chuck Connors is almost counterproductive. Still, there's lots to laugh about. --Tom Keogh

Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Year:	1980
Release Date:	October 6, 2008
Runtime:	164 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	P H E 9664
Keywords:	Airplane, Comedy, Two, General, Disaster, Sequel, Spoof
Genre:	Comedy