Airplane

Director: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker

Release Date: 1980

Should this be on the list?
It's probably the best parody every created and for certain a top 10 comedy. Its position on this list is well deserved.

Rating: 5 Stars out of 5

Would I watch this again?
Shirley, you can't be serious!

When Airplane! was released in the summer of 1980, it followed a trailer that was totally in keeping with the spirit of the movie. It was dead serious, cut in such a way that if you hadn’t seen the movie, you would be unaware that this latest offering was anything other than another example of the disaster genre that had dominated the box office in the late 1970s. I was nine years old at the time and really hated the idea of a group of people being put in danger, much less standing by and watching people on a screen being put in danger, so when my Dad suggested that we go see this movie while we were on vacation in Virginia, I chose to stay in the hotel room with my thoughts.

“This movie is not what you think,” he said. He was almost laughing.

I had just spent the morning watching my parents ride the Loch Ness Monster at Busch Gardens, fully expecting to see them fall to their deaths on the loop, so I had already dodged a few bullets that day. That was enough, as far as I was concerned.

Dad shrugged. It was rated ‘R,’ anyway, so it was probably going to require parental guidance at the very least. I’m sure he was relieved, so he and Mom could watch in peace, while I stayed by myself in the hotel room.

Again, it was 1980.

Those of you who have not watched it (and just where have you been), the plot of the movie is pretty much superfluous: during a commercial flight, the crew and most of the passengers get sick on contaminated fish, and a war hero who hasn’t flown in years has to land the plane. But this is all secondary to a miraculous amount of sight, sound, and running gags that make this movie what it is. It was essentially a direct parody/remake of the 1957 movie Zero Hour! starring Dana Andrews, which, if you are a fan of this movie, you should watch. It is eye-opening.

At any rate, when I did discover it was a comedy, I was pretty much sick that I didn’t see it in the theater. My cousin Doc, who is a year older than me, did see it that summer, and as a public service, decided to describe to me, in glorious detail, everything that took place in the movie. Now, since he was 10 and I was 9, it would make my life complete if I could somehow go back in time and be a fly on the wall for that conversation, because I’m sure it would have been unintentionally hilarious. But what I remember of his description, Doc made sure to focus on one particular aspect of the movie. And no, not that.

It was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

You forget that Kareem was not only active at the time, but was currently the best basketball player in the world. He plays the co-pilot, Roger Murdock, and when a young boy is allowed into the cockpit to visit the pilots, the kid insists that he is Kareem, as “Roger” protests, at least for a while. This, to Doc, was the coolest and funniest thing ever, and I could not say that it wasn’t.

Later that year, my family was driving on I-88 through Oneonta, and at the time, there was a drive-in movie theater just north of town that faced the highway. I just happened to look over, and there was Kareem, grabbing the kid by the collar and saying, LISTEN, KID! I’ve been hearing that crap ever since I was at UCLA. I’m out there busting my buns every night! Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes! It was just as Doc had said.

A few years later, I was at my grandparents’ house in Massachusetts. My Opa came from the Netherlands, and he was in his early 70s at the time, and for most of my life I knew him as a quiet man who liked to tinker with electronics and liked to read, very formal in an Old World sort of way. He was from a different era, the kind of man who would eat a burger with a knife and fork. They had a massive console television that sat in a corner of their dining room, usually reserved for whatever PBS was playing that night.

I don’t know how the television got tuned to a station that was playing Airplane! that night, but it got there. Oma left the room, this not being her cup of tea, but Opa remained. It was just him and me watching. Opa’s face, when at rest, was stereotypically Dutch, chiselled and stern, containing no room for mirth, but at moments could explode into unexpected joy. This was one of those moments, an it was a revelation. He loved it. We watched the whole thing, and I don’t think I ever saw him like that. It’s possible I never felt closer to him.

As it turned out, Opa had been on the stage a lot when he was in his teens and twenties, and he was a great fan of Danny Kaye, and often would play out scenes (in Dutch) of what he had seen Danny do in the movies.

This is possibly the silliest movies that’s ever been made, and yet, I was able to pull up three separate memories of how it touched me and my family. To borrow from the plot of Sullivan’s Travels, we completely underestimate comedies and the power of laughter.