re: Airplane!

Probably seen it over 2 dozen times in 30 years. It's easy to overuse terms like "genius" or "work of art", but, for a comedy, this was extremely well thought out - much more like the effort associated with a great drama. It is a painstaking remake of an older, ostensibly dramatic film Zero Hour, but with all of the 1970s disaster (particularly airline disaster) film sensibilities added. Guys like Stack, Bridges and Nielsen playing their roles straight (functioning as parodies of their usual performances), with most of the other roles bordering on farce and slapstick.

Any film with Steven Stucker (Johnny) is worth watching because he always goes for broke.