MOVIE · 1980

Airplane!

Comedy88 min

When food poisoning knocks out the flight crew of a commercial airliner, an ex-fighter pilot with a drinking problem has to take the controls and work with his stewardess ex-girlfriend to land the plane. Robert Hays is the reluctant hero at the center of the chaos, opposite Julie Hagerty’s increasingly flustered flight attendant. Around them, Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar keep the disaster-movie setup perfectly straight while the film piles on visual puns, background jokes, and nonstop send-ups of 1970s airline thrillers.