Credit: Paramount Pictures

10 comedy movies like ‘Airplane!’

Mon 29 April 2024 7:00, UK

In addition to being one of the greatest Hollywood comedies ever made, Airplane! kicked off the craze for parodying cinema history. It did it via rapid-fire gags, relentless one-liners, and self-aware references that ended up becoming a beacon of inconsistency the longer the trend carried on.

Obviously, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker, and David Zucker hardly invented the notion of big screen parody, but they did play a massive part in popularising the trend of roping in established dramatic actors, encouraging them to play their performances as seriously as possible. In doing so, they let the majority of the humour emerge organically from a combination of their expert line delivery and razor-sharp script.

Paying tribute to the resurgence of the disaster drama in the 1970s, Airplane! is a nonstop barrage of jokes with a remarkably high hit rate that the mainstream parody film rarely managed to attain before the turn of the millennium led to a drastic downfall in quality.

It’s a classic for many good reasons, but if the sides haven’t been split to a sufficient degree by the time the credits roll, then there isn’t too far to turn to find another similarly-inclined film guaranteed to cause uncontrollable fits of giggles.

Scattergun spoof comedies like Airplane!

The best place to start with comedies like Airplane! is to dip into the back catalogue of filmmakers who created it, with Top Secret! even echoing the exclamation mark at the end of the title. Broadening their horizons to skewer Elvis Presley-style musicals, spy stories, and the war genre, Val Kilmer shines in what was his feature film debut.

There’s an underwater barroom brawl for the ages, a library-set sequence filmed entirely in reverse, and sight gags galore in Top Secret!, making it a fitting companion piece. If that still isn’t enough, then the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker triumvirate would reunite once again for Leslie Nielsen’s timeless slapstick pratfalling in police procedural The Naked Gun.

Hot Shots! Part Deux should make the cut ahead of its immediate – and equally hilarious – predecessor solely for the multi-layered Platoon/Apocalypse Now/Wall Street gag with Charlie and Martin Sheen, while Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery kicked off an uproarious trilogy in showstopping style by placing James Bond squarely in the crosshairs and letting loose.

Of course, no list of titles like Airplane! is complete without Mel Brooks, the filmmaker who was doing inspired parodies and spectacular spoofs before the Zuckers even got their foot in the industry door, with Blazing Saddles comfortably sitting among the pantheon of all-time comedic greats.

Mike Myers - Austin Powers — Credit: Alamy

Lovingly-crafted genre homages like Airplane!

Airplane! may have mercilessly pillaged from Zero Hour, Airport, and a collection of other airborne disaster flicks for inspiration, but at the end of the day it was still a loving homage the very genre it pulled apart at the seams to inspired effect.

With that in mind, it would be rude to overlook Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s 21 Jump Street, a fantastic ode to the odd couple buddy cop comedy that takes the concept of the TV show bearing the same name and drags it kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Along similar lines, Murder by Death sends up Agatha Christie and the whodunit at large by enlisting a stacked roster of heavyweights – including Truman Capote, Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith, and David Niven – to tackle a murder mystery, while Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid does much the same for film noir and pulpy detective stories.

This Is Spinal Tap doubles down by satirising rockstar self-aggrandisement and hagiographic documentaries in one fell swoop, and for something distinctly British but gut-bustlingly great, the whip-smart Four Lions incinerates the socio-political spectrum by following a group of bumbling would-be suicide bombers and their disastrous scheme to cause explosive chaos.