The complete lack of continuity in Airplane! is a feature, not a flaw of the film. Who cares if someone explodes mid-flight? Who cares if the flight crew momentarily play instruments when they should be flying the plane? The only parts of the plot that matter are those which take the piss out of disaster movies, and the rest of it is there to retain the rough illusion of a through line. The real reason we keep coming back to this movie isn’t for some deeply hidden emotional character arc – this is about as anti-drama as a comedy will ever get. We watch it purely for the gags, most of which have nothing to do with the actual story at hand. As such, Airplane! often feels more like a comedy showcase than a comedy movie, but that doesn’t make it any less funny.
Perhaps due to the lack of consideration for whether any single joke services the narrative, Airplane! may be one of the densest comedies out there, bearing stylistic similarities to the Marx brothers in its relentless onslaught of quips. With this many gags packed into 90 minutes it’s no wonder that some of them don’t find their mark. Its age shows particularly in a piece of racial stereotyping that isn’t so offensive as it is played out. But the ratio of hits to misses is far higher than you would expect of a comedy such as this.
The 1957 movie Zero Hour suffers the brunt of the movie’s attacks. The bare bones of the film’s plot could be directly lifted and imprinted on Airplane!, and they would be almost identical. It is this similarity that drives home the scathing digs at disaster movies as a whole – the ex-military man with a troubled past, the “subtle” gratuitous sex, the long-winded expository flashbacks, the overwrought climax. No disaster trope gets off lightly. But the part of Airplane! that has become most ingrained in our culture are the puns that are often still quoted today, the greatest of course being the eternal:
“Surely you can’t be serious?”
“I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.”
The visual humour of Airplane! rarely relies on slapstick, instead using its editing and framing of sets and characters to pay off on some of its greatest gags. Filmmakers such as Edgar Wright and the Farrelly brothers have cited it as a significant influence on their careers, and its style even shows up in lauded television shows such as Arrested Development. Its lasting appeal ultimately comes down to its inventiveness, its irreverent take on self-serious Hollywood movies, and of course, its absolute commitment to even the worst of its puns. Forty years after its release, Airplane! is still so much fun.
