At the opposing and antagonistic extremes surrounding the philosophy of making a comedy film are the two approaches to dealing with the job of being funny. At one extreme is situated the technique that sees humor in terms of recognizing that your character inhabits a comical situation. Far to the other side of this line sits the comedic approach in which your characters behave naturally as if they were not aware that they are supposed to be funny.
Airplane! is one of the iconic examples of the latter example. Someone not familiar with the machinations of Hollywood comedy films could conceivably watch Airplane! without realizing that they were watching a comedy film. Actually, one need not even be unfamiliar; in fact, someone very familiar with the film could watch many of the scenes and think they were watching a melodrama. All one need do is watch the film upon which the satirical parody is based: Zero Hour!
The extreme that opposes the knowledge of a definite expectation of humor is accomplished to spectacular effect in Airplane! While someone completely unfamiliar with Hollywood comedic tropes could conceivably mistake the film for a light drama, the suspension of disbelief ends when the argument is forwarded that anyone with even a passing knowledge of Hollywood comedy could mistake this film for anything but a comedy. And yet a video comparison of Airplane! with Zero Hour! reveals a rather shocking dramatic realism at work. Large snatches of dialogue that are played strictly for drama in Zero Hour! are taken verbatim and placed into the screenplay for Airplane! It is only when a humorous component is tacked onto the dramatic portion of the script that it transforms completely from the serious to the humorous. Most of the actors in Airplane! approach their characterization as if they could quite easily step into the story being told in Zero Hour! In fact, the only actor who appears to realize he is working within the construct of a comedy is the late, great Stephen Stucker: “And Leon is getting laaaaarger!”
Airplane! is a brilliant example of how great comedy can be mined from taking a seemingly serious approach to material. While Jerry Lewis and others are prime examples of how mugging and an awareness of the humor of a situation can produce very funny comedy, too often the result of this methodology winds up closer to the embarrassment of watching the cast of “The Carol Burnett Show” finding their material much funnier than audiences or any film in which Danny McBride appears. Airplane! reveals that being funny is not dependent upon on behaving as if you think you are funny.
