Airplane! (1980)

My Review

“Airplane!” is a seminal satirical comedy movie which parodies numerous areas of motion picture and television culture, especially disaster films. Directors-screenwriters Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker generously populate the film with celebrity cameos, sight gags, puns, and slap-stick comedy.

The cast is headed by Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty, an airplane pilot and flight attendant who face challenges. Others include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar defending his basketball play to a young boy, Barbara Billingsley speaking jive, and Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Leslie Nielsen, and Peter Graves in comedic versions of roles that made them famous.

Even more co-stars abound such as Jimmie Walker, Joyce Bulifant, Lorna Patterson, Maureen McGovern, Kenneth Tobey, Jill Whelan, Jonathan Banks, James Hong, Howard Jarvis, Nicholas Pryor, and Ethel Merman in her final motion picture appearance. She first started in the movies in 1930 in “Follow the Leader,” a musical comedy from Paramount which starred Ginger Rogers and Ed Wynn.

The watchable and entertaining “Airplane!” was the fourth highest grossing film of 1980 for Howard W. Koch Productions and Paramount Pictures. It was filmed in and around Los Angeles, California. A second film “Airplane II: The Sequel” was released in 1982.