You don't even need to have seen the comedies its parading. The jokes are just good

| Mar 23, 2025

What’s most extraordinary, looking back, is that the vast majority of them are really good jokes -- not always clever, not always tasteful, but for the most part really damn funny.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 12, 2024

It is very funny in a very silly kind of way and that people who intend to see it should do so as soon as possible. For this is a movie whose charm comes totally from the unexpected, off-the-wall nature of its jokes.

| Nov 4, 2021

Part of what makes this all so effective is how straight the actors play their parts; in the face of unending fatuousness, the cast remains earnestly aboveboard.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jun 28, 2021

It reminds us of the importance of pushing boundaries at the same time that it gives us a playbook for doing so in a good-natured rather than vicious or belittling way.

| Apr 26, 2021

The cast is nearly perfect.

| Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 1, 2020

With its endless succession of movie parodies, puns and non sequiturs, it's the closest that cinema has ever seen to a live-action interpretation of Mad magazine.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 5, 2020

Hays and Hagerty had great chemistry that made their story believable.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 27, 2020

The visual and cultural gags are limitless, and remain mostly relevant and chuckle-worthy across time.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 18, 2020

Airplane! (1980) was a trend-setting, zany, hilarious comedy - using as its core material the airplane disaster film as the spoof's stepping stone, borrowing from the subplots of heavy-handed films in the 1970s decade.

| Original Score: A+ | Sep 27, 2019

Verbal jokes, novel images, and political allusions all take place, including flashbacks that give way to an amazing spoof of Travolta. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Aug 14, 2019

One of the reasons why Airplane! works as well as it does is because of those actors who play their lines with a deadpan performance.

| Jun 18, 2018

The popcorn will probably stick with you longer than this silly saga but, if you need a few belly laughs, get a boarding pass. Airplane is the ultimate take-off.

| Apr 28, 2018

The level of humor is not always consistent, but the filmmakers have thrown almost everything in with a shotgun approach and the routines work more often than not.

| Jul 3, 2017

The really great thing about Airplane! is that the jokes undercut your expectations so deftly.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 8, 2015

Airplane! is a splendidly tacky, totally tasteless, completely insignificant flight, a gooney bird of a movie that looks as if it could never get off the ground and then surprises and delights with its free-spirited aerobatics.

| Jun 8, 2015

Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker, who share both writing and directorial credits, become so desperate for laughs that the jokes descend to a much cruder level.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 7, 2015

[VIDEO ESSAY] The film's mixed bag of cultural references spill out faster than you can catch them.

| Original Score: A- | Mar 17, 2014

From takeoff to landing, this whacked-out parody is a loopy flight of fancy.

| Aug 3, 2013

There's hardly a second that passes without an assault by a wickedly accurate spoof, cringe-inducing pun or inspired sight gag, and the years have not diminished the film's dumb appeal.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 3, 2013