“I feel a little queasy. The altitude I guess. I’ll have a bourbon… with a beer chaser. ” – Mrs. Devaney
Number of Times Seen – 2 (5 Feb 2013 and 4 May 2016)
Brief Synopsis – When an airplane is hit by a mid-air collision and the pilot is incapacitated, the head stewardess must try and save the passengers.
My Take on it – This is an average movie with an average storyline that tried to capitalize on the popularity of the original film and just wasn’t able to match it.
The ensemble cast here is one of the main things going for it because they were able to get a list of very high quality actors to join in here.
Charleston Heston (a 1970’s disaster staple), George Kennedy, Karen Black, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Linda Blair, Jerry Stiller, Norman Fell, Sid Ceasar, Myrna Loy, Gloria Swanson, Nancy Olson, Larry Storch, Erik Estrada, Sharon Gless and Dana Andrews are all fun to watch here, but they can’t help the average storyline.
One of the things that makes this movie stand out even more for me is the fact that this movie is heavily parodied in the Airplane spoof series of these films created by the ZAZ (Zucker-Abrams-Zucker) team. Lots of scenes are quite predominantly parodied there and when I watched this, I started to laugh at the serious scenes because of this.
Bottom Line – Once again, this film has a great ensemble cast, but the storyline feels quite average. Lots of scenes are clearly parodied in the Airplane movies which raises their importance a bit here.
MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Early on in the film Gloria Swanson’s PA refers to the autobiography the actress has just finished writing and asks her to provide the names of two actresses who didn’t cave in to the studios under pressure. She replies, “That’s easy–Carole Lombard and Grace Moore!”, Moore was an operatic soprano and close friend of Swanson. Both Moore and Lombard were killed in airplane crashes in the 1940s. (From IMDB)
Rating – BAFTA Worthy
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I know exactly what you mean about Airplane! altering how you view certain scenes. When that doctor was talking on the phone, I kept expecting a heart to start leaping around his desk. 🙂
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Me too!!! And the singing nun!!!
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