Part of 2024 In Tribute
The persons and events in this film are fictitious — fortunately! A masterpiece of off-the-wall comedy, AIRPLANE! features Robert Hays as an ex-fighter pilot forced to take over the controls of an airliner when the flight crew succumbs to food poisoning — with Julie Hagerty as his girlfriend/stewardess/co-pilot, and a cast of all-stars including Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Leslie Nielsen, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar…and more. Their hilarious high jinks spoof airplane disaster flicks, religious zealots, television commercials, romantic love — the list whirls by in rapid succession. And the story races from one moment of zany fun to the next. Co-written and co-directed by the A in ZAZ (Jim Abrahams), AIRPLANE! cemented the Wisconsin-hailing filmmaking trio’s place as the funniest midwestern parodists in Hollywood.
“Casting the unflappable [Leslie] Nielsen to deliver lines like ‘I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley’ in response to the completely reasonable phrase, ‘Surely you can’t be serious,’ was part of the brilliance of Jim Abrahams…. The quotable lines are legion, but the bizarrely funny images are also why AIRPLANE! lingers so large in the cultural memory.” —Esther Zuckerman, New York Times “At a time when throwaway gags seem like a luxury in any film, AIRPLANE! has jokes — hilarious jokes — to spare. It's also clever and confident and furiously energetic, and it has the two most sadly neglected selling points any movie could want right now: it's brief (only 88 minutes), and it looks inexpensive (it cost about $3 million) without looking cheap.” —Janet Maslin, New York Times (Jul 2, 1980)
