Our 2023 Staff Picks series continues this month with one of the greatest comedies in film history, picked by Director of Film Exhibition Sam Eddins. Here’s what he had to say about his pick:
“If Silly Police existed, the Airplane! production would have shut down on day one. It’s quintessentially dumb in the smartest way possible. Every line of dialogue and every shot is littered with the dumbest, smartest, silliest, most nonsensical and darkly offensive jokes, usually all at once. There’s Ted’s ‘drinking problem.’ The girl scout fight. Ethel Merman. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The guitar vs the girl’s oxygen tube. Johnny and his newspaper hat. The pedophile pilot with the absurd Turkish prison question. The varieties of suicide from each passenger listening to Ted’s story. The tribe ‘learning’ about basketball and tupperware. Famous Jewish Sport Legends. Boys’ Life. Nuns’ Life. Black coffee. Jive. And that’s barely scratching the surface of just one 87-minute comedy from 1980 deemed significant enough to preserve by the Library of Congress. Plus it’s PG and has boobs in it, so… yeah. Come see it this week, or don’t- I’ll be patiently waiting for the cab driver to return in the meantime.”
Airplane! is playing at the Sidewalk Cinema September 15 – 17. Get tickets here.