Airplane! (1980)

There's a moment in Airplane! where a joke lands so fast you're still laughing at the previous one, and by the time you've caught your breath, three more have already flown past. That relentless, almost aggressive density of gags is what separates this film from every parody that came after it, and almost all of them did come after it. This is the granddaddy of the modern spoof comedy, and four and a half decades on, nothing has quite managed to replicate what Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers pulled off here.

The premise is simple enough: take the po-faced disaster movie formula, the kind of earnest, sweat-drenched airport thriller that was absolutely everywhere in the 1970s, and gleefully set it on fire. What follows is a breakneck, anything-goes farce that doesn't so much parody its source material as it does cheerfully dismantle it, joke by joke, until the whole structure collapses in a heap of sight gags, puns, non sequiturs, and absurdist one-liners. The film moves at machine-gun pace, and the cumulative effect is something genuinely special. Background gags reward a second viewing. Throwaway lines hit harder on reflection. The whole thing operates at a level of controlled chaos that, when it works, is almost breathtaking in its commitment.

And it does work. Properly, helplessly, tears-streaming-down-your-face work. The Saturday Night Fever disco sequence alone earns its place in the comedy hall of fame through sheer audacity and perfect execution. Leslie Nielsen's stone-faced Dr. Rumack is comedy gold, playing every line with the grave sincerity of a man who has never once been in on the joke, and that straight-faced approach is exactly what makes it sing. Robert Hays holds his own too, committing fully to every ridiculous beat with the kind of deadpan sincerity that a lesser actor would have smirked through. The supporting cast operates on a frequency of its own, and the whole ensemble is clearly having an absolute riot.

It's impossible to talk about Airplane! without mentioning its shadow. I've reviewed The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! on here before, and that film carries a lot of the same DNA, the same creative team, the same deadpan structure, much of the same cast. That one holds up remarkably well. Airplane! is a trickier proposition, and I'll be honest about that.

Because this film is very much a product of its time, and not always in a charming, nostalgic way. For every brilliantly timed visual gag, there's a dated stereotype or a joke that lands with an uncomfortable thud. Some moments feel less like edgy humour and more like relics. Not because we've all gone soft or lost our sense of humour, but because certain targets simply aren't funny anymore, and the film doesn't seem to know the difference between punching sideways and punching down. It doesn't so much walk the line between clever and crude as it sprints across it repeatedly, and it stumbles more than once.

That tension, between the brilliance and the baggage, is what makes rating this film an interesting exercise. Because the best moments here are among the funniest ever committed to film, full stop. But the weakest feel like things we've outgrown, and rightly so. Both things are true at once, and I think it's worth sitting with that rather than waving it away in the name of "it was a different time." It was. Times change. Films don't.

What I keep coming back to, though, is how genuinely inventive the whole enterprise is. Airplane! proved that comedy could be smart and stupid simultaneously, that a film could be both sublimely crafted and completely, joyfully ridiculous. It's a landmark, there's no question about it, and its best moments absolutely justify its reputation. The imitations it spawned, most of them, frankly, dire, are a kind of accidental tribute: you can see exactly what everyone was chasing, and you can see exactly how hard it is to catch.

Three and a half stars. Timeless and unmistakably dated, all at once. Appreciate it for what it is, wince at the bits that deserve it, and absolutely laugh at the rest.

Rating: ★★★½  | Year: 1980  | Watched: 2026-04-05

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from David Zucker: The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988) · BASEketball (1998)
More from the 1980s: Nightmare City (1980) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Style Wars (1983) · Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)