MovieChat Forums > Airplane! (1980) Discussion > Is this that this film doesn't age well ...

Is this that this film doesn't age well or?


I was born in 1983 and I remember hearing from this film quite a few times in my youth but never happened to watch it. So it came up in the deals section at amazon and from the rating here I decided to get it. I mean 7.8 rating for a comedy makes it the highest ratest comedy ever I believe. So I watched it with my brother last night...


Sure we smiled 2-3 times but they tried so hard to make a million 1st degree gags in every scene it was boring us to death.

So my theory: This type of spoof film was something never seen before in 1980 and it must have been quite well praised by people when it came out. I understand there are quite a lot of 70s references there but the first degree humour doesn't do it for us since we passed teenage years.

I can't see how this is rated higher than "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist" for example which was the greatest comedy ever made. They sure tried very hard but I'd rather have a very funny moment every 5 minutes than 10 awful gagsevery minute that are supposed to be funny for 10 year olds.

I can't see how anyone could find this important to watch unless you are a cinema teacher and want your students to know what NOT TO DO in a film. This film shows that to the infinite.

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What examples of what not to do in a film does it contain?

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Trying to insert as many gags you can to fill the emptiness of a movie.

If this film was aimed at a 12 year old audience that can only catch 1st degree humour than I'm fine with it but I'm pretty sure they aimed at a wider audience back in 1980. Did people live in caves that they would find such bland humour funny? How is this regarded as a cult classic? Was this the first parody people ever watched? If yes, that would explain a praise in the context. But the film seen today is anything but funny.

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It was the first of these ridiculous, gag-a-second movies, and it's still funny.

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It isn't laugh-out-loud funny. It is based on puns, which will make you smirk rather than laugh.

Unfortunately like many comedies the jokes were topical, making fun of movies from the 70s like Saturday Night Fever and Airplane Disaster movies. Also 70s TV ads like the "He never takes a second coffee" advertisement.

That means many of the jokes will go over modern audiences' heads, because they don't have the topical knowledge that 1970s audiences had
.

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i grew up watching those airport disaster movies and airplane! is a brilliant send up of them, its like the brady bunch movie if you loved the tv show the movie makes sense, if you didnt then the movie is complete nonsense.and there are tons of quotes, you can go to anybody on the planet and say 'dont call me shirly' and theyll know what your talking about.

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Did people live in caves that they would find such bland humour funny? How is this regarded as a cult classic?

... But the film seen today is anything but funny.


There are a number of politically incorrect jokes in this film that would almost certainly not make it into a similar spoof these days.

I am not a huge fan of Airplane! (which I viewed for the first time last week), but I did find several parts of it quite funny and certainly colorful. I would not consider the humor "bland" at all. Over-the-top parody is not my cup of tea, and the film becomes less compelling later on when it focuses on the final descent as opposed to character and social satire, but I can see why it delighted viewers then and continues to do so nowadays.

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I'm your age and saw this as a kid. So since I like this film, I live in a cave now? Or are you intentionally insulting people to get a rise out of them?



Global Warming, it's a personal decision innit? - Nigel Tufnel

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Part of the reason it's considered a classic is because it's so quotable.

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but I strongly disagree with all most all of the OP. It's a great movie. The fact that it's one of the first of its kind counts for something to me. The jokes may seem unoriginal these days, but they were original at the time. It's an important movie that has influenced the type of comedy we have today.

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Before this movie, the ZAZ team had written KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE. That movie had the same type of humour, but since it was made of skits, you could say that this movie was the first of its kind.

It's not about it aging well or not. If that was true, you would've liked it because you grew up with other 1980s comedies, right? Everyone has their own taste in humour.

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My cousin is about your age. I was surprised about 8 years ago when he hadn't seen the movie, and I showed it to him. I naturally assumed he would think it was the funniest movie ever made, but instead I had to explain almost every non-obvious joke; everything from how you could formerly smoke on planes and that Reagan was a B movie actor before he was president, to the color of the old Tylenol capsules. Who June Cleaver was and why it was funny that she could speak jive. That Leslie Neilson (or most of the other actors, for that matter) had never done comedy. Who Kareem Abdul Jabbar was. And so on...

Anyway, no, I'm not surprised at all that you didn't like it - it spoofs a lot of culture that you were never exposed to. It would be like me trying to watch a Hindi comedy that spoofs popular Indian culture.

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I agree that some of what you just said was some culture that I missed but there were also way too many first degree jokes. At some point it was getting on my nerves to see so many gags. I have been a flight attendant for a few years and looked after this film. It was interesting but mostly it it not my type of humour and secondly I wasn't born at the time so I might have missed a few things. I am not american but... I believe everyone knows Kareem Abdul Jabbar.... no?

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I'm also not American and didn't necessarily 'get' all the cultural references in Airplane! but I got most of the references and humour and found it to be one of the funniest films I've ever watched (and still do find it that funny!). I have a broad sense of humour and can find lots of different styles of humour funny - be it subtle or crude. I also, for example, found American Pie hilarious, yet I wasn't an American, an adolescent or a boy - and a lot of people might think that kind of film would only appeal to that demographic - but, as with Airplane! I found it so funny at times that I couldn't stop laughing and laughed so hard I had tears rolling down my face!

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Its the same way I feel about Monty Python.. Clearly I don't pick up all the jokes and references but the ones I do / the ones that culture doesn't matter make it so funny, you can't like it unless you don't get comedy.

I can fully understand a younger person not getting all the references (shoot I don't being born in 1972 but not being a big TV/ movie person growing up), but Airplane would still be a top 20 comedy just based on items you don't need to know the references on....

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Mighty Yar, you summed it up perfectly......I remember seeing this in the theater, and laughing so hard non stop, never seen anything like it..I mean serious actors being funny, it was genius at the time...

You Have a Hard Lip, Herbert..

Better Living Thru Chemistry

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I was born in 1982, and this is one of the funniest films I have ever seen. Sure, there are a couple of jokes that don't age well. For example "Jim never vomits at home" and beating up the solicitors at the airport which don't exist anymore like they did in the 70s and 80s, but most of the humor is timeless. Even though those jokes are from another era, I still found them hilarious only partially getting them.

Here's my theory: It's just your sense of humor. This movie is not for you. And unlike other types of posters, I'm not going to say there's anything wrong with you not liking this movie since it's only a matter of taste, but to most people this movie is a legend of comedy.

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Here's my theory: It's just your sense of humor. This movie is not for you. And unlike other types of posters, I'm not going to say there's anything wrong with you not liking this movie since it's only a matter of taste, but to most people this movie is a legend of comedy.

Best answer selected. It's great to see a response with an opinion where no one else is put down. I saw it when it was new and still laugh out loud when I see it today. The character of Johnny was hilarious in nearly every scene in which he appeared. Much of the humor would be lost on the younger generations IMO.

Hollywood: See a gun, hear it get cocked!

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Just a quick note to put "Jim never vomits at home" into perspective. If you recall, earlier in the film Jim's wife's character thinks in voiceover, "Jim never has a second cup at home..." This is a direct reference to a 1970s coffee commercial wherein a couple are out to dinner and the waitress offers the husband a coffee refill, which he accepts. Next comes a voiceover of the wife thinking, "Jim never has a second cup at home," and decides to buy that brand of coffee from then on. The vomit gag later in the movie was just ZAZ taking this reference to a more ridiculous level.

And yes, to echo others, if you don't understand the cultural basis upon which a satire rests you probably won't enjoy the satire.

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Just a quick note to put "Jim never vomits at home" into perspective. If you recall, earlier in the film Jim's wife's character thinks in voiceover, "Jim never has a second cup at home..." This is a direct reference to a 1970s coffee commercial wherein a couple are out to dinner and the waitress offers the husband a coffee refill, which he accepts. Next comes a voiceover of the wife thinking, "Jim never has a second cup at home," and decides to buy that brand of coffee from then on. The vomit gag later in the movie was just ZAZ taking this reference to a more ridiculous level.

And yes, to echo others, if you don't understand the cultural basis upon which a satire rests you probably won't enjoy the satire.

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I was born in 1984 and saw the movie as a kid; I thought it was hilarious then. Now I saw it for the second time and found the jokes dated. Didn't really laugh at all.

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What is 1st degree humour?

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1st Degree Humor is when you set out to be funny. If you unintentionally do or say something funny, that would be Manslaughter Humor.

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I thought that mans laughter was the objective in all humor?

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I was 14 when this movie came out and I loved it. I was flipping channels last month when I came across it again and stopped. I found myself watching it until the end. There are so many sight gags that even after 50+ viewings, I still find new gags I've missed. The same thing with their other spoof movie "Top Secret" which still makes me laugh.

A younger generation doesn't get Airplane! because most of the actors were not known comedic actors like today and they were playing their roles "straight". This was part of the joke, as opposed to being over the top like most comedies today. You also had to have seen the movies they were spoofing to get a lot of the jokes. However, while I agree some of the references are dated, I didn't understand a lot of them at 14 and it didn't stop me from enjoying the movie in 1980.

Over time, I think it also suffers a bit from the glut of "spoof movies" that have come along recently. This has soured viewers on these types of spoofs and Airplane! gets lumped in with them. These spoof movies today take a subject and just throw in a ton of unrelated pop culture references that have nothing to do with the main topic. Watch Airplane! again. The ZAZ boys stick with their subject matter and the movie has a linear quality to it. Then go watch something like Epic Movie which is just all over the place. Jokes come out of nowhere and are so disjointed the movie has no cohesion. A great spoof should be very similar to the subject matter it is spoofing with just a slight step to the left of reality. That is where pure comic gold resides.

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I watched it a second time. Some of it made me cringe and I understand that some of it is dated. I'm not really into spoof movies in general but I have to say Airplane is tons better than those teenage spoof movies that are released these days. Airplane! might be a bit too "straight" for me.

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I just finished watching a DVD copy of it. It has been quite some time since I have watched the unedited version, and I was laughing my ass off. I saw it the first night that it was released, and I think that I laughed more tonight than I did when I first saw it.

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