Airplane! (PG)
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The American Film Institute, ever-vigilant in its painstakingly subjective enumerations, recently ranked Airplane! as the tenth funniest movie of all time--well ahead of such equally revered and referenced Eighties mainstays as National Lampoon's Animal House (#36), Caddyshack (#71), and Fast Times at Ridgemont High (#87). No question, the gag-per-frame ratio of this first studio feature from the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team is higher than most any in the AFI's entire top 100, and you're partly right to trace the success (and excess) of last year's Scary Movie (not to mention select Farrelly Brothers fare) back to the ZAZ squad's acknowledged masterwork of comic cinema. But it's the casting of previously unfunny screen pros such as Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, and Leslie Nielsen--rather than the sheer quantity of double-entendres and jive-talking grannies--that truly distinguishes this relentless farce as an American classic. Even Jim Carrey at his most caffeinated is no match for Nielsen's immaculate deadpan, while Graves's congenial Captain Clarence Oveur plays pedophilia for gentler laughs than Todd Solondz would likely allow ("Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?"). Fact is, this thing is better acted than the flicks it was designed to lampoon, which is more than you can say for anything on the Wayans Brothers' docket. (James Diers)
Review by James Diers
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