The Airplane movies were more than just parities of the successful
Airport disaster movies of the seventies. The disaster film genre as
a whole was basically being poked fun at. But just like the Airport
movies, in this film, you have your panicking passenger, your
reluctant heroes and the ground crew that assists in guiding the crew
and passengers to a safe landing. Each of which have their own funny
twist. Robert Hayes, though relatively unknown at the time, did his
most memorable work in these movies. There were also a number of big
name actors that appeared in the Airport movies. Actors like:
William Shatner, Robert Stack, Peter Graves and Lloyd Bridges, just
to name a few. The funny thing was that they weren't really known for
comedic roles at that time. That may be why it worked so well, since
most people weren't expecting those kind of roles to be played by
those particular actors. Anyway, it worked very much to the film's
advantage. |