‘Airport’ or — Funnier Than ‘Airplane!’?
I’ll admit that I was somewhat pissed when I returned home last night which could explain why I loudly announced on walking through my front door, and to no one in particular, “Sod it. I’m watching ‘Airport’!” After all, what better company to have whilst inebriated than Dean Martin trying to land a disintegrating plane? And besides, I hadn’t seen any of these movies since Abrahams and the Zuckers made it impossible to take the ‘Airport’ series seriously ever again, although the over-riding question I was ultimately left with was — “How the hell did anyone take this seriously to begin with?” because ‘Airport’ (1970) might be the most hilarious movie ever made!
What initially surprised me about ‘Airport’ is that, for the most part, it isn’t so much a disaster movie as a demented melodrama where every line of dialogue, every situation and every character is cranked-up to such a ridiculous extent I’m shocked any of the actors were able to make it through a scene without breaking down in hysterics. Nothing is normal, everything is insane and urgency reigns supreme even when it has no business being there in the first place.
At one point Burt Lancaster’s wife turns up at his work, seemingly out of nowhere, to tell him she wants a divorce. We’ve hardly spent any time with her so don’t even know who on earth she is although she’s given a monologue so outrageously overwrought that it might as well be the climax of the movie. “Better to come from a broken home than to live in one” she tells Lancaster before storming off and leaving a bewildered audience thinking “Where the hell did THAT come from?!”
And the film keeps whacking you round the head with one brain-numbing left-field smack after another (this isn’t so much a plot as a series of verbal artillery strikes on the viewer). “This movie can’t get any more ridiculous” I mumbled in awe to myself halfway through only for ‘Airport’ to suddenly make a screeching hard turn into a subplot about… abortion! Again — where the hell did THAT come from?! What on earth does a discussion about the ethics of birth control and pregnancy have to do with Van Heflin blowing up a plane with a bomb?
And it’s relentless, an unending avalanche of lunacy powered by the most inspired dialogue ever written. Here are only a few examples –
‘I didn’t know he was going to Rome. I thought he was going to Milwaukee.’
‘This plane is built to withstand anything… except a bad pilot.’
‘”See Rome and die” he always said. But he died just when we were packing.’ ‘Gee. That’s too bad.’ ‘I know. So near yet so far.’
There isn’t a normal line of dialogue in the entire movie, and it is absolutely fantastic.
When the bomb finally does go off it’s done with such unexpected ferocity (essentially Jacqueline Bisset has a toilet door blasted into her face at point blank range) that even that is hilarious and left me gasping for breath so violently I found myself reaching into my TV screen in a futile attempt to grab one of the passenger’s oxygen masks.
‘Airport’ is genuinely flabbergasting and there’s a very strong chance it might be the funniest movie ever produced, and it’s all down to that astonishing script. It’s not just that it’s good. It’s that it’s a fucking work of art.
