Airplane II: The Sequel (1982)

Truly Dreadful Film

Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The original film was my favorite comedy of all time. This isn't good, but it certainly isn't terrible. Given the status of modern spoof movies, it's still the best movie ever. I think my main problem with this flick is that it just reuses many jokes from the first one. The weird thing is that the jokes they do use are funny. It just doesn't do anything that the original didn't do better.The two leads from the last movie still haven't gotten their relationship back together. I missed Leslie Neilsen. At least we got Johnny back! It's a pity the famous people who worked on the first movie aren't back. Weird, I thought William Shatner only had like a cameo in this movie. He actually did have a pretty relevant part. **1/2

Could this film even be considered to be made much less released today? It shows physical abuse against women several times: getting slapped around, shaken, punched and humilated in various scenes seemed to be a common theme. How did people (the writers, the actors, the director, the audience) think this was funny?

'Airplane II' is practically the same movie as the original 'Airplane', only the jokes are different. Whilst it may seem like a cop out, the first 'Airplane' was a resounding success, so why change a working formula? The sequel is funny, and that's all that matters.The film may lack ideas and originality but it makes up for it with plenty of laughs. The original 'Airplane' is without doubt the funnier of the two, but this certainly isn't short of jokes that are sure to crack you up. They knew that they were never going to outdo the first 'Airplane' movie, and obviously just decided to play it safe.I'm not sure why 'Airplane II' has a considerably lower mark than the original movie on IMDb, I would have thought that those who enjoyed the first would have also liked the second... at least I did.

Rushed together under the success of the first one, the nastiness of getting this released. The jokes are mostly unfunny, the set-up forced, and the slugs at the "Airport" series forced rather than fully plotted. This takes the bomb plot of the first film and puts it into the hands of Sonny Bono who buys a bomb in the airport gift shop before boarding a super sonic jet heading for the moon. Once again, Robert Hays is estranged from fiancée Julie Hagerty, having had another breakdown somewhere in between the two movies, and is desperate to get her back. Somehow discovering that Bono has a bomb, Hays becomes a hero again, after the pilots (once again lead by Peter Graves) are afflicted by poisonous gas let out of the computer system let out by a Hal like mind. The first movie was hysterically funny because every gag seemed to be choreographed rather than just tossed on for cheap laughs. The gags here are either repeated or weakly placed without regards to the outcome or the placement. Gone are Leslie Nielsen (seen only in an obvious filler flashback) and Robert Stack, here replaced in a different part by William Shatner, obviously spoofing his "Star Trek" role, and he gets the funniest visual gag. Lloyd Bridges and Stephen Stucker are back as are a few of the same passengers, with Ann Nelson very funny in her cameo, but poor Lee Bryant reduced to further hysterics that uses a flashback and comes off as more gratuitous than funny. I missed Lorna Patterson, seen in the same flashback, but a definite sad absence. I wanted to see more of future soap diva Louise Sorel, seen briefly as a nurse.A sad follow-up to one of the greatest comedies ever made took the spoof out of filmmaking until the "Naked Gun" series came along. In watching the two films back to back, the second film's weaknesses become all the more apparent.