Airplane! - The Greatest Comedy of All Time is Not a Mel Brooks Movie

Airplane! (1980) is a comedy masterclass that works because it layers a relentless joke factory — minimum 264 jokes across 88 minutes — onto a dead-serious dramatic through line about a PTSD-afflicted war veteran forced to land a plane in an emergency. The film's genius is that its straight-faced performances and faithful dramatic structure serve as a "clothing line" from which jokes hang seamlessly, an approach that influenced decades of comedy from the Farrelly Brothers to Seth MacFarlane to South Park. Jaclynn, who did not enjoy the film as pure comedy, and Robby, who has loved it since seeing it in theaters at age nine, find common ground in recognizing it as a formal masterpiece even as they debate its more problematic elements. The two then find common ground while tearing into Cole for his wildly incorrect assumptions about the film.