Lambie Reviews Airplane! (or Flying High as it's known here)

Year: 1980
Accolades: One of 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die

If the name of this film comes up, chances are that you will immediately think of a certain exchange:

"Surely you can't be serious."
"I am serious, and don't call me Shirley."

Either that, or you know the exchange but don't know where it came from. It came from this film, starring the likes of Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Julie Hagerty, Robert Hays, Leslie Neilson, and Robert Stack. The film has, at the same time, become one of those often quoted comedies that everyone needs to see. A cult classic that is remembered as one of the most hilarious things ever put to screen. So, after 30 odd years does the comedy of this film hold up?

Oh yes.

This is one of the funniest films I have seen in a very long time. With comedy being a subjective thing, I didn't find about 50% of the jokes all that funny, but the genius of this film is that it blends many different types of comedy together. If you don't like the absurdist style of comedy, there's always the wordplay, or the visual puns. It takes risks with those repeating jokes that crop up over and over again and build up, becoming more absurd each time. Like the other jokes, however, they're all of a slightly different variety of humour, and even if none of them work for you there's plenty of other one-off stuff to take in.

There's so much going on that just about everyone's sense of humour is addressed. It feels like there's a joke in just about every shot. Hell, they even put "So there." at the end of the copy-write notice during the credits. That demands respect if not anything else.

Interestingly, it was the most well-known parts of the film (including the “Don't call me Shirley” line) that were the bits I found the least funny, and it was the other stuff that I found myself laughing at. It was probably because it was newer to me than the stuff that has now been repeated over and over again. The film is just so damn clever about the way it delivers the punchlines. If delivering it deadpan will make it funnier, it will be delivered deadpan. If it needs to break the fourth wall, it will. There are no rules, but if keeping things restrained will make everything funnier then that's what it will do.

It doesn't try and shove every joke in your face, either. A lot of stuff happens in the background, and indeed it's very easy to miss quite a lot of the jokes (the propellor sounding drone that's always present for what is actually a jet-powered plane, for example). There's not much more that can be said about the film, short of starting to discuss some of the jokes that arise, but that would spoil it for the rest of you who haven't seen the film.

This is how spoof comedies should be made. Universal, timeless jokes that don't assume the audience are idiots, not the pop-culture referencing crap that is churned out of Hollywood these days.