Classic Movie: Airplane! (1980)

Directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker

Paramount Pictures

“And that was the beginning of my drinking problem…,” recounts Ted Striker (Robert Hayes) as he throws water on himself.

Or perhaps you prefer one of the following: the middle-age woman who can translate jive—the foreign language spoken by the plane’s only two black passengers—or the continuously ascending lists of substances that McCrosky (Lloyd Bridges) announces he shouldn’t have quit this week, which spirals from cigarettes to drinking to amphetamines to sniffing glue.

But that’s not all, let’s not forget the 8-year-old girl who declares that she likes her tea black, “the same way I like my men” and Kareem Abdul-Jabaar simply appearing as a pilot and denying he is actually Kareem Abdul-Jabaar.

Everyone who has had the pleasure of experiencing “Airplane!” has a favorite scene or moment. In a week when David Zucker’s new movie “Scary Movie 4,” retreads horror movies that you’ve already forgotten in a manner that will get old five minutes after you leave the theater, go for his classic version of the same material.

Although “Airplane!” is mainly spoofing contemporaneous hits, like “Airport” and “Superman,” almost all of the gags are still really funny. The few that are somewhat dated, like the unnecessary fey gay stereotype—Johnny in the control tower—are so outweighed by the ones that are still hilarious that they barely matter.

The plot is completely inconsequential: Striker chases his stewardess girlfriend onto a plane where most people, including the pilots get violently sick from eating bad fish. Striker has to overcome his fear of flying a plane, induced by a bad accident during the war, in which led to everyone’s death but his own.

But it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that this is probably the funniest comedy I have ever seen, in competition only with “The Naked Gun,” which was created by the same team.

Recently one of the smartest people I know said, “Surely, I won’t like that type of movie.” I responded: “You will love Airplane and need to see it. And don’t call me Shirley.”

—Reviewer Scoop. A Wasserstein can be reached at wasserst@fas.harvard.