Airplane! is a 1980 American
satiricalSatire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
comedy filmComedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...
directed and written by David Zucker,
Jim AbrahamsJim Abrahams is an American movie director and writer.Abrahams was born in Shorewood, Wisconsin, to a Jewish family, and attended Shorewood High School...
, and
Jerry ZuckerJerry Zucker is an American movie director known for his role in directing comedy spoof films, and the hit film Ghost....
and released by
Paramount PicturesParamount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
. It stars
Robert HaysRobert Hays is an American actor and is arguably most well known for his role in the movie Airplane!-Life and career:...
and
Julie HagertyJulie Hagerty is an American actress and former model.-Early life:Hagerty was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of Harriet Yuellig, a model and singer, and Jerry Hagerty, a musician. Her brother Michael Hagerty was also an actor. Her parents later divorced. Hagerty attended Indian Hill High...
and features
Leslie NielsenLeslie William Nielsen, OC was a Canadian and naturalized American actor and comedian. Nielsen appeared in more than one hundred films and 1,500 television programs over the span of his career, portraying more than 220 characters...
,
Robert StackRobert Stack was an American actor. In addition to acting in more than 40 films, he was the star of the 1959-1963 ABC television series The Untouchables and later served as the host of Unsolved Mysteries.-Early life:...
,
Lloyd BridgesLloyd Vernet Bridges, Jr. was an American actor who starred in a number of television series and appeared in more than 150 feature films. Bridges is best known for his role of Mike Nelson in Sea Hunt, the most-popular syndicated American TV series in 1958...
,
Peter GravesPeter Aurness , known professionally as Peter Graves, was an American film and television actor. He was best known for his starring role in the CBS television series Mission: Impossible from 1967 to 1973...
,
Kareem Abdul-JabbarKareem Abdul-Jabbar is a retired American professional basketball player. He is the NBA's all-time leading scorer, with 38,387 points. During his career with the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers from 1969 to 1989, Abdul-Jabbar won six NBA championships and a record six regular season...
, and
Lorna PattersonLorna Patterson is an American film, stage and television actress.Patterson was born in Whittier, California, where she attended Rio Hondo College for a single semester. She is a founding member of the Musical Theatre Guild and has appeared in many stage musicals...
. The film is a
spoofA parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of the
disaster filmA disaster film is a film genre that has an impending or ongoing disaster as its subject...
genre, and a close parody of the 1957 Paramount film
Zero Hour!Zero Hour! is a 1957 movie whose screenplay was written by Arthur Hailey, starring Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, and Sterling Hayden, and released by Paramount Pictures. Zero Hour! was an adaptation of Hailey's 1956 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation play Flight into Danger...
. The film is well-noted for its use of
absurdistAbsurdist fiction is a genre of literature, most often employed in novels, plays or poems, that focuses on the experiences of characters in a situation where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events...
and fast-paced slapstick comedy, including a lot of visual and verbal puns and gags, as well as surrealist comedy.
Airplane! was a financial success, grossing over
US$The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
83 million in North America alone, against a budget of just $3.5 million.
