Jim Abrahams
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Together, they're like fanboys who have refused to grow up, peppering scenes with references to Flash Gordon, Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Knight Rider plus pointed nods to Cheers, Airplane!
A flashback to the night John and Lori met, for instance, is a shot-for-shot (sound effects included) recall of a scene from 1980's monumental spoof movie "Airplane!"
A disco flashback that seems to be referencing “Saturday Night Fever” is actually recreating the spoof of it in “Airplane!”
Like Family Guy, the film serves up cutaway digressions that are hilarious partly for being so unexpected; a flashback to John's first meeting Lori is cast in the form of homage to the Saturday Night Fever disco dance lampoon in Airplane!
And mercifully, there's only one shot-for-shot movie reference: the bar scene from Airplane!
There's one scene in which Wahlberg does a parody of Robert Hays in "Airplane!"
It purportedly spoofs the airplane-based disaster movies so popular at the time of its 1980 release, but much of the main plot (a scarred war pilot must attempt to land a passenger jet during a storm when the crew falls ill) and even some specific scene are lifted from the little-known 1957 B-movie Zero Hour! ; it simultaneously satirizes one particularly obscure film, ’70s disaster films, and every bad B-movie you’ve ever seen.
Having worked together in the theater group they founded, the “Kentucky Fried Theater,” the filmmaking trio (known as ZAZ) found inspiration in a 1957 feature drama dubbed “Zero Hour!” starring Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell, and Sterling Hayden.
Hot Fuzz (2007)
Directed by Edgar Wright
influenced by Airplane! (1980), Top Secret! (1984)
Themes Visuals
But there are some decent examples out there - Johnny English is a goofy spy spoof also made in the UK but for greatness, you'll struggle to beat the inspired Airplane!
It wouldn’t have been a problem had the movie been made in the similar vein as “Airplane!,”…
The Review: When I think of spoof movies, I think of the movie that’s become the template of all that followed…1980’s Airplane!
Most spoofs and satires suck these days because they try too hard to make you laugh instead of playing it straight like the actors did in “Airplane!”
On the other hand, if they had, it wouldn't make Hot Fuzz such a blast: the best genre satire since Top Secret! and the best film of any sort so far this year.
Anderson says his style of directing actors was inspired by the farces — Airplane!
(Anderson claims to have gotten the idea from the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker comedies Airplane!
Here, people perhaps expected something hard-boiled, and got Paul Thomas Anderson's take on Airplane!
He’s enraged, too, by a screening of Airplane! in the same summer as his own 1980 comedy, Caddyshack .
And the bitterness at losing their pre-eminence, first to “Saturday Night Live,” which raided the Lampoon’s writing staff and radio players, and then “Airplane!,” which upped the comic ante for the pace of jokes, is palpable.
When the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker filmmaking team made Airplane!
It's actually a welcome throwback to the Airplane!
Writer-director Craig Mazin’s spoof of the Spider-Man and X-Men movies is marginally less wretched than those hopeless compost heaps cranked out by his erstwhile colleagues Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg (Date Movie, Epic Movie, etc.)—thanks mainly to a stronger cast peppered with seasoned pros (Christopher McDonald, Brent Spiner, Leslie Nielsen, Marion Ross, Keith David, Jeffrey Tambor)—and maybe also thanks to the presence of David Zucker (of the original Airplane!)
It's sure as hell no Airplane!
Mazin gets help from old pals Leslie Nielsen , who plays Rick's kindly uncle Albert, and David Zucker, who directed the last two Scary Movies, along with Airplane!
(It has the same effect as the one on 1980's Airplane! ) It's a peculiar combination of a potentially big story told with deadpan blandness, with an absolute nothing of a lead character -- complete with a paunch and a bad moustache -- who imagines himself as something more.
The “Zero Hour” crisis situation (how to get the airplane down) was also borrowed for the terrible “ Airport 1975 ,” in which Karen Black played a stewardess who tried to follow instructions radioed from the ground.
At least they’ve watched them: such golden age wheezers as The High and the Mighty and Zero Hour (the inspiration for Airplane!
It’s this overt quality that brings to mind the visual puniness of David Zucker (“The Naked Gun,” “Airplane!”)
What made the original Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker films like Airplane! and The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! so effective was their commitment to parody, visual gags, and fourth-wall-breaking absurdity.
…those that don’t enjoy the comedy stylings of the original The Naked Gun trilogy or Airplane!
Just like there’s only one Airplane!, one Caddyshack, one Animal House.
As a student of the original series (plus Airplane! and Top Secret)…
…relatively fresh off the success of Airplane!
It is the sort of ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ approach that typified the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker comedies of the 1980s including Airplane!, Top Secret, and – indeed – the original Naked Gun of 1988.
It's half a straight airborne-disaster tale and half an airborne-disaster satire, in the manner of the 1980 comedy classic, "Airplane!"
FBI agent Samuel L. Jackson is plunked amid a slew of grinning, digitally-rendered serpents aboard a flight, gory wackiness and phallic metaphors follow; one of the slithering villains is "indigenous of the Middle East," somebody mumbles, but the model is, mercifully, less United 93 than Airplane!, with Jackson's deadpan clowning upholstered by director David R. Ellis and buttressed by expedient foolery from SNL alumni Kenan Thompson and David Koechner, everybody hip to the wonky gig.
Director David R. Ellis (Cellular, Final Destination 2) and screenwriters John Heffernan, Sebastian Gutierrez and David Dalessandro faithfully work within the standards set by the fantastic disaster movies of the '70s - films like The Towering Inferno and Airport 1975 - without resorting to outright parody, which Airplane! so ingeniously mastered.
She's the Man (2006)
Directed by Andy Fickman
influenced by Big Business (1988), Airplane! (1980)
Plot
Julie Hagerty ("Airplane!") plays Viola's mom, a girly girl obsessed with all things debutante despite her jock daughter's nature and "Arrested Development's" David Cross is the overly friendly Principal Gold, a clueless social pyriah.
And on its own, the movie makes as much sense as the deservedly forgotten, Menaechmi-induced Big Business , starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin and Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin.
Battle: Los Angeles (2011)
Directed by Jonathan Liebesman
influenced by Airplane! (1980)
Dialogue Plot
When he goes off on a five-minute tangent near the end of the second act, an over-the-top, would-be heartrending monologue about the duties of war and the tough decisions he's had to make, only to follow it up with the outrageous declaration, "But none of that matters right now," it is akin to a punchline from 1980's "Airplane!"
Michael Nantz, who — to paraphrase Lloyd Bridges in "Airplane!"
When the noble staff sergeant played by Eckhart has to face down the noble but ticked-off brother of the dead soldier (the ticked-off fellow is played by Cory Hardrict ), the speech Eckhart delivers is so sodden and treacly he sounds like Robert Stack droning on while nobody's listening at the end of " Airplane!
The Recipe: One part War of the Worlds, one part generic stoic army guy movie from 1957 set during WWII, one part Independence Day, one part goofy dialogue that makes it seem like the screenwriter watched Airplane!
The reason for this is because the ZAZ team framed their zaniest conceits (having Barbara Billingsley trade jive with two unreceptive African-Americans, sparking a ferocious, furniture-smashing barroom brawl between two Girl Scouts, undercutting a scene of plane cabin panic by having a big-breasted woman run in front of the action for a single jiggly second) with an uncredited, scene-for-scene fabrication of a forgotten ‘50s airplane actioneer called Zero Hour (based on a novel by Airport author Arthur Hailey).
While movies like Airplane!, Hot Shots and Naked Gun were hugely popular in their days, their type was not seen as frequently on the big screen.
As Bryan Curtis has pointed out in Slate , the spoofs of Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker—the team behind Airplane!
You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008)
Directed by Dennis Dugan
influenced by Top Secret! (1984), Hot Shots! (1991)
Themes
The early sections of the film reminded me of when Zucker and Abrahams were still funny, as with Top Secret! and Hot Shots!: you know, goofy and silly but not stupid.
The early sections of the film reminded me of when Zucker and Abrahams were still funny, as with Top Secret! and Hot Shots!: you know, goofy and silly but not stupid.
The truly inspired scenes are far outnumbered by the familiar ones recycled from earlier spy spoofs like Austin Powers and Top Secret!
Opening so soon after Mafia! tried our patience for the whole Airplane!
Neilsen (who mastered the necessary deadpan style in both Airplane!
Mafia! and BASEketball brought out the toilet humor to cover creative bankruptcy, which is especially shocking when you consider their respective creators, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker, were part of the team responsible for the funny and inventive Airplane!, Naked Gun, and Hot Shots! series.
At times it is perhaps too comic; Tom Hollander's sneering Kaiser Wilhelm is like something that snuck in from the Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker spy spoof, "Top Secret!"