Loaded with slapstick silliness and schoolboy wordplay, featuring tongue-in-cheek performances by familiar television personalities, and mostly just plain goofy, this inventive comedy from the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker writing-directing team (THE KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE, THE NAKED GUN)
lampoons crisis-in-the-air films like THE CROWDED SKY and ZERO HOUR.
Ted Striker (Robert Hayes), a failed fighter pilot, is forced to take the controls of a commercial jet liner after the captain (Peter Graves) and co-pilot (basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) become ill. Encouraged by his stewardess girlfriend (Julie Haggerty) and zany Dr. Rumack (Leslie
Nielsen), and receiving ground support from the even zanier Kramer (Robert Stack), Striker does his best to follow the incomprehensible instructions he is given. Meanwhile, passengers become daffy, berserk, sex-crazed, and generally impossible. The onslaught of one-liners and sight gags in
AIRPLANE! is so relentless that even the most dour viewer is ultimately won over--or exhausted.
