Saturday 14 January 2012

Airplane!

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Year:1980
Country of origin:USA
Director:Jim Abrahams, David Zucker
Genre: Disaster movie parody
Starring:Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Lloyd Bridges, Leslie Nielsen
Rating:4/5
IMDB link:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080339/
Tagline:You've read the ad, now see the movie!
Favourite line:Ted Striker: "Surely you can't be serious." Rumack: "I am serious... and don't call me Shirley."

The original, and probably the best.
Two years before Nielsen took on the role of Frank Drebin in the extraordinary Police Squad series, came Airplane!, a romp through all that is corny about movies.
Taking the basic premise of a disaster movie (which were very popular in the 70's) this plays it all for laughs, throwing a gag every few seconds at the audience and, inevitably, some have to hit the mark. True, it's not infallible - the gay guy in mission control is hugely irritating - but there are more hits than misses. Parodying pretty much every movie cliche with some style, this has stood the test of time particularly well.
My favourite part is when Kramer is making his way to the control tower and has to fight his way through people asking him to sign up for various organisations. The violence steadily increases until he is into full on chop socky mode.
Highly entertaining.

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