by Caleb Richardson
Whenever I want to go to the movies I always check the tomato meter against the shows playing. If it’s higher than 80, on the critics side, I’ll go for sure. I love the fact that I can say that there is an 80 percent chance I will like this movie. This luxury wasn’t always present. People, like me, had to go and search for the right avenue to hear what they needed to ensure that they would receive what they wanted. Whether it was just two thumbs up from people who we all thought knew what they were talking about cause they had a television show, or simply the paper they subscribed to. What I’m trying to say is I picked the wrong day to quit college and writing papers altogether. But enough about me I don’t want to bore you I really could go on for hours.
Airplane! hit a wide release July second 1980 and was universally praised at release and to this day holds up as one of the best comedies ever to be released. It holds a 98 percent on rotten tomatoes and received very few negative reviews. Roger Ebert wrote, “Movie comedies these days are so hung up on being contemporary, radical, outspoken, and cynically satirical that they sometimes forget to be funny.” Roger was not alone with his praises, the NYT, Variety, and TIME, all gave Airplane! great reviews. In all of their writings they site the style of comedy presented, go figure, noting the child-like gags and one liners carried this movie. Although if you ask me this movie wouldn’t receive a PG especially from the MPAA. Witch goes onto my next point.
When a film is rated it immediately gives the studio the potential ways to market a movie. This film is PG witch gave paramount a wide audience to market to. If one was to watch the original 1980 trailer this is shown clearly. Paramount had this trailer cut to appeal to anybody. “This film has: drama, action, romance, music, and dancing and Kareem Abdul Jabbar?”(Trailer) Let the box office speak for itself. This movies production budget was 3.5 million dollars. In the United States the films total gross was 83,453,539. (BOM) After doing some simple math that’s just under 24 times its budget.
This success is due to the ensemble cast and crew who put this movie together. Writer/Director’s Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker (ZAZ) have an almost never ending list of comedies that follow Airplane! Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty and Leslie Nielsen took the leading roles with a supporting cast to make a “comedy without comedians” (ZAZ) also featuring an NBA player. Although many of these people didn’t make it into the NBA hall of fame, they did make one of the best comedies ever. It was this as much as anything else that lead to my drinking problem.
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