Airplane II: The Sequel
Entry updated 10 February 2025. Tagged: Film.
US film (1982). Howard W. Koch Productions. Produced by Howard W. Koch. Written and directed by Ken Finkleman. Cast includes Sonny Bono, Raymond Burr, Lloyd Bridges, Chuck Connors, John Dehner, Chad Everett, Peter Graves, Julie Hagerty, Robert Hays, Kent McCord, William Shatner, Steven Stucker, Rip Torn, and John Vernon. 85 minutes. Colour.
This is the sequel to the Parody film Airplane! (1980), made without the participation of its authors and directors Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker. Despite some elements of Fantasy, like the strangely sentient, inflated "automatic pilot", the original film does not qualify as sf; this sequel definitely does, since it is set in the future and involves the first flight of a passenger-bearing space shuttle to a base on the Moon. As in the first film, the center of attention is insecure pilot Ted Striker (Hays), first assigned to fly the shuttle but banished by a judge (Burr) to a psychiatric facility after he is unfairly blamed for a crash actually caused by mechanical problems with the shuttle. Though these issues have not been addressed, bureaucrats demand that the shuttle be launched, inspiring Striker to escape from the institution and board the shuttle in order to warn his on-and-off girlfriend and crew member Elaine Dickinson (Hagerty) of the danger. Predictably, the shuttle soon malfunctions, and nothing can apparently be done because the vehicle is being controlled by a rebellious Computer, parodying 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). (There was also an earlier reference to E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial [1982] when an unseen being with elongated fingers attempts to use an airport phone to "call home.") As the out-of-control shuttle plummets towards the Sun, Striker manages to destroy the computer with a bomb brought on board by a suicidal passenger (Bono), so that Striker can employ the shuttle's "warp drive" (with imagery recalling that of Star Wars [1977]) to redirect the shuttle to the Moon, and with some guidance from lunar commander Buck Murdock (Shatner), he manages to bring the shuttle to a safe landing.
While all commentators agree that this film is vastly inferior to the first film, it is not as bad as reports indicate, as writer-director Finkleman occasionally manages with some success to replicate the madcap Humour of its predecessor. Needless to say, perhaps, the film is not scientifically accurate, as most clearly shown in the concluding scene where passengers disembark onto the lunar surface without spacesuits. [GW]
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