Written and Directed by Jim Abraham, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker
1980/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon rental
Elaine Dickinson: Ladies and gentlemen, this is your stewardess speaking… We regret any inconvenience the sudden cabin movement might have caused, this is due to periodic air pockets we encountered, there’s no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you enjoy the rest of your flight… By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?
[all hell breaks loose in the cabin]
This silly, but very funny, movie paved the way for a number of disaster flick spoofs and other genre parodies.
The premise is fairly basic. Stewardess Elaine (Julie Hagerty) and former fighter pilot Ted Striker have had an idyllic romance. Now Julie has decided to break up because Ted has PTSD from combat and now avoids any work that involves responsibility. Ted is desperate to win her back and boards the flight she is working on.
When all the pilots and most of the passengers come down with food poisoning, Ted is the only passenger with flight experience, albeit not with passenger aircraft. With Leslie Nielsen, Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack, Julie Hagerty, and Robert Hay.
The plot is but a device to hang hundreds of one-liners and slapstick gags on. The humor is really juvenile, often tasteless and hilariously funny.
This is my son’s favourite movie and we have watched it a gazillion times. If someone gets sick he asks if they had the fish. And his idea of a drinking problem is… Different.
So many quotable lines! Not “polically correct” but so fun.
Joyfully, wonderfully stupid. This is a movie that throws every joke it can at the wall and enough of them stick that you tend to miss the ones that don’t.
Exactly.
Shirley, you can’t be serious?
I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley!