It definitely remade Leslie Nielsen’s career. He (along with Peter Graves, Robert Stack, and Lloyd Bridges) were known as very serious drama actors, and the thing is, they play their roles as such. Although they may be absurd, they deliver their lines perfectly seriously.
Leslie Nielson in particular was so hysterical his career shifted into comedy, starring in Police Squad! and The Naked Gun, and then a string of movies mostly not made by the ZAZ that used him wrong, frankly. Where they have him being silly and making funny faces…he was excellent at delivering an absurd line as if it was perfectly serious.
It really worked that Johnny played by Stephen Stucker was the only character who seemed to know what genre of film he was in. You get one character who gets to be wacky.
There’s that perfect moment where he and Peter Graves share a moment. “How long until you can land this plane.” “I don’t know.” “Well can’t you guess?” “Well, not for another two hours.” “…You can’t take a guess for another two hours?” The fun of it is they got serious acting talent to deliver this dumb midwest humor dialog.
Airplane! lapped Zero Hour! so hard most people don’t know about the existence of the latter
it also spawned the whole genre and although Leslie Nielsen made lots of movies before this, his legacy is this as well as the other parody movies
It definitely remade Leslie Nielsen’s career. He (along with Peter Graves, Robert Stack, and Lloyd Bridges) were known as very serious drama actors, and the thing is, they play their roles as such. Although they may be absurd, they deliver their lines perfectly seriously.
Leslie Nielson in particular was so hysterical his career shifted into comedy, starring in Police Squad! and The Naked Gun, and then a string of movies mostly not made by the ZAZ that used him wrong, frankly. Where they have him being silly and making funny faces…he was excellent at delivering an absurd line as if it was perfectly serious.
Robert Stack apparently kept trying to play it like a comedy, and it took them a while to convince him to play it completely straight.
It really worked that Johnny played by Stephen Stucker was the only character who seemed to know what genre of film he was in. You get one character who gets to be wacky.
he represents the perfect straight man. the end of airplane when he goes back to the empty cockpit, it’s the coup de grace
There’s that perfect moment where he and Peter Graves share a moment. “How long until you can land this plane.” “I don’t know.” “Well can’t you guess?” “Well, not for another two hours.” “…You can’t take a guess for another two hours?” The fun of it is they got serious acting talent to deliver this dumb midwest humor dialog.
TIL Airplane! is a parody.
It’s such a close parody that they actually secured the rights to remake it. Much of the dialogue is exactly the same.