Airplane II: The Sequel

If Airplane! is one of the funniest movies ever made, and Airplane II: The Sequel recycles many of the same jokes, then at least in my head, Airplane II is one of the funniest sequels ever made.

Or something.

The Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker team from Airplane! wasn't involved in Airplane II: The Sequel, and you can tell. Writer/director Ken Finkleman (for whom this film represents a career peak) does an admirable job of capturing the spirit of the original film.

In doing so, he recycles most of the jokes from the first film: the "What is it? That's not important right now..." jokes, the jive talk, the "together" joke, etc.

But see, I like those jokes. I don't mind that Finkleman recycles here.

He fights a losing battle, though. This should've been a Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker film, but it isn't. Leslie Nielsen is missing, as well as Robert Stack, so much of the dry humor from the first film is gone, even though Lloyd Bridges and William Shatner bring quite a bit of funny, but the spirit of the original is largely missing.

I guess the question is, do I care? Will I still watch this movie? Did I leave the iron on?

Come to find out, there are multiple versions of this film. There's a televised version that includes alternate scenes to make up for scenes edited out for television. Many films of this era shot additional scenes to take the place of scenes too risqué for TV.

Gone is the scene where Sonny Bono's character learns he's impotent, which is just weird, so now he has no motivation for blowing up the plane, and so goes the joke at 33:00 where Elaine offers to help him stow his briefcase in the overhead if he can't "get it up." In fact, the joke doesn't make sense until the police detectives show up at the tower around 55:00.

That's probably the most egregious cut from the original theatrical version. Still, Airplane II is watchable — the kind of film you can watch on a Saturday afternoon sometimes. I dig it despite the flaws.