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By
WAYNE KLEIN
A clever, funny parody of
disaster movies (bad melodramas such as "Zero
Hour" and "The High and The Mighty" along with
"Airport" were the prime targets here), "Airplane!
The `Don't Call Me Shirley' Edition" manages to
combine silliness, puns and with topical humor in
a style that recalls something out of an alternate
off-kilter universe. Filled with melodramatic,
over-the-top music, deliberately bad acting and
every cliché about plane disasters you can
imagine, "Airplane!" aims wildly and accurately
most of the time taking the wind out of the sails
of bad (and some good ones, too such as "Jaws")
movies everywhere. Evidently the writing/directing
team of Zucker, Zucker and Abrahams (who wrote
"Kentucky Friend Movie" for director John Landis
and later went on to crate "The Naked Gun" films)
caught "Zero Hour" on TV and realized that this
overripe melodrama was just right to be plucked
and served up as comedy (something it verged on
anyway).
Robert Hays plays Ted Striker (the name of Dana
Andrews' character in "Zero Hour!") a former
fighter pilot who is now afraid to pilot planes
since a disastrous mission years before. Striker
books a seat on the flight of his girlfriend
Elaine (Julie Hagerty) in hopes of working out
their relationship. When the crew and passengers
are brought down by food poisoning Ted has to
overcome his fears to pilot the plane to safety.
While the film looks very good (and better than
its previous edition), I was a bit disappointed by
the amount of dirt and debris. I thought that a
deluxe edition like this would have a nearly
pristine print and that Paramount would have the
film digitally cleaned up. Overall the film looks
good but could have been tweaked more for this
special edition. The soundtrack sounds pretty good
overall and is presented in Dolby Digital 5.1 and
2.0 with dialogue clear and little distortion.
The extras are where this edition truly shines.
"Airplane! The `Don't Call Me Shirley Edition"
doesn't have any of the conventional special
features you'd expect. There's no "making-of"
documentary or featurettes on the film per se. The
"Long Haul Version" allow you to watch the film
with frequent detours into comments by the actors
(Hays is present but Julie Hagerty curiously
isn't), writers/directors and other production
crew. We also get deleted scenes in the "Long
Haul" section that are quite amusing in many
instances as well. Included in the "Long Haul"
version are clips from the movie that inspired the
Zuckers/Abrahams "Zero Hour." We also get the
theatrical trailer and a clever menu that presents
some of the classic scenes from the film as if
you're watching an animated version of those
horrible safety/disaster cards they place on
airplanes drawn in the same style. This is like
watching the movie, deleted scenes and a
documentary at the same time. It's a great conceit
and works pretty well here. There is also a
subtitle track that features trivia about the
movie and points out visual mistakes, etc.
throughout the movie.
There's a good commentary track featuring the
directors sharing stories about the production of
the movie. This sounds like the commentary track
from the previous edition. The commentary track
provides a lot of amusing stories, trivia and
background about the movie. Many of the comments
are also echoed in the extended branching edition
of the movie so listening to the commentary track
really can't compare to watching the seamlessly
branching edition.
A classic comedy that still works amazingly well,
this special edition of "Airplane!" is well worth
it for the fans of the movie. Although the image
quality could have been cleaned up a little bit
more for this presentation, it's a pretty minor
issue really as the "special features" make this
edition worthwhile for fans of this classic bit of
madness. |
