Movies - Airplane!

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	Movies - Airplane!

Airplane! is an American comedy film, first released on June 27, 1980, produced and directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker, and starring Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Lorna Patterson. It is the second of a number of movies produced and directed by the trio (the first being The Kentucky Fried Movie
). In some foreign releases (including Australia), Airplane! was entitled Flying High. The reason most often quoted for this is that in those countries the name 'airplane' is not used to refer to a powered flying machine, however this is somewhat unlikely. The vast majority of English-language films are made in the USA, and so the term "airplane" would be perfectly familiar to their English-speaking audiences. In any event, the pronunciation of British English variant "aeroplane" is very similar to the way many Americans say "airplane".

The movie is meant to be a spoof of several movies, including Airport 1975. It is regularly shown on television, with many devotees repeatedly rewatching the film, in the process catching other gags that they did not notice earlier due to the sheer number of often overlapping sight, sound, and dialogue gags.

Airplane II: The Sequel
, first released on December 10, 1982, attempted to tackle the science fiction film genre. Although most of the cast reunited for the sequel, the two films have no writers in common.

Several actors were cast in order to spoof their established images: Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack and Lloyd Bridges had played many adventurous, no-nonsense tough-guys, including Stack as the captain in one of the earliest airline "disaster" films, The High and the Mighty
. Nielsen had played "more cops, doctors, and attorneys than you could shake a nightstick/stethoscope/law book at."

Plot synopsis

The plot of Airplane! is a well-travelled one. The story of an in-flight medical emergency, caused by food poisoning, started as the CBC TV movie Flight into Danger
, then became the 1957 Paramount Pictures movie Zero Hour!
Thus Airplane! is the fourth remake of the Arthur Hailey novel Runway Zero-Eight. Also, there are several influences from the disaster movie Airport 1975.

Airplane! is very close to Zero Hour!, following it virtually scene for scene, and lifting its major characters and most of its story line. The directors acknowledge all of this in their DVD commentary. Indeed, many of the best known lines are repeated verbatim, for example, "Can you face some unpleasant facts?" and "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking," which becomes a running gag. As the plot escalates, so does the potency of the drug ("I guess I picked the wrong week to quit sniffin' glue.") Even the odd sports cameo remains intact. In Zero Hour!, the cameo is by Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch. In Airplane!, it is basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Airplane! ]

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