Airplane!

"Surely you can't be serious." "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley." Oh, Airplane!, will you ever cease to amuse? The greatest spoof movie of all time, Airplane! is loaded to the brim with gags both big and small. Many, many air disaster movies are spoofed, as are some non-air disaster ones (such as Silver Streak, with an airplane taking the place of the train). Leslie Nielsen gave such a great performance in this film that he moved from serious acting to doing spoof films (most notably the Naked Gun and Scary Movie series). In addition to Nielsen, Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Robert Stack, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Otto the Autopilot star in the picture. Hays plays a former World War II pilot who has a drinking problem (one of the best gags in the movie; you'll have to see it to believe it). When the pilots (Stack and Abdul-Jabbar) on the airplane he and his ex-girlfriend (Hagerty) are on eat the fish for dinner (which is contaminated), meaning that Hays is the only one on board who can land the aircraft. Otto, of course, plays the inflatable autopilot.

Rating: 3.5/4