Airplane! is the perfect comedy

Jokes involving racial stereotypes can be funny and inoffensive if what you're making fun of IS the stereotypes, not the race. The writers of Airplane! being Jewish themselves, I reckon they knew exactly what they were doing. At least the bearded plane is clearly an example of making fun of the stereotype, not the people.
- Soul Plane was a non-stop parody of black stereotypes. Damn that was good.
  
  Black Dynamite!
  
  Undercover Brother
  
  Soul Plane was the first movie with John Witherspoon I ever saw (somehow), it will always have a special place in my heart. Man was an absolute comedy legend.
- I wish it was so simple. Really it should be. A word can mean any number of things based on context or inflection but now i have to really be careful as to not offend. I feel like that's a created thing.
  Obviously i say things in a friendly way or in a mean way and I feel like we are just going the "you can't say that word" route. When it's not the word, it's the context.
  As such, yes anyone who finds that picture offensive falls into that group. It was also a great movie. Let's dissect Spaceballs for racism next!
- if what you're making fun of IS the stereotypes, not the race.
  Tell that to my American friends if the N word comes up. Yeah, some things for some people are so wired in as associated with offence or trauma it's better to steer clear. At least in real life. Public media is weird because it's kind of to everyone and no one at the same time. I'm glad some films/etc can make fun in ways some find offensive, but I'm glad I'm not the judge of it!

how about the topless shot halfway through this PG movie?! it feels like there is a lot of content they would never achieve that rating with today.
- Ski Patrol, Police Academy 2, and Airplane the list goes on for 80s movies with a single brief topless shot.
  I'd argue the self-aware humor of Airplane was really calling out stereotypes like the one pictured, and defusing tensions with humor. Now Revenge of the Nerds, there's a problematic movie.
  
  dude, lets just rape some people or otherwise sexually assault them and call it good-natured fun!
  
  From 2010, Hot Tub Time Machine had a short but delightful topless seen that was absolutely sexual
  NSFW
  https://celebsroulette.com/videos/6025/jessica-par-hot-tub-time-machine-2010/
- Frankly a plain topless shot is not in my opinion grounds for anything heavier than a PG rating
  
  Completely agree with you. If a man can show his nipples and it's fine, why can't women. It is sexism and misogyny.
- When rated R movies were RATED TITTY FUCKING R.
- Airplane was released in 1980, before the PG-13 rating existed. I’m not sure how the film would be rated today, but I’d wager it would not hit PG standards without significant edits.
  
  Basically the TV edit. They cut out the boobs but left the blowjob gag.
- I think you can still maintain a PG-13 rating as long as the boobs shown are not directly sexualized and they only appear in one shot or scene.
  
  Titanic and Across the Universe are two examples.
- That preceded the PG-13 rating.
  PG movies back then had more swearing and brief nudity like that scene in airplane was fairly common.
  Stuff like that is why PG-13 came about. American parents didn't like it when their children saw two frames of boobs in a movie.

As a German, this is one of the few movies where the dubbed version is just as good as the original, in parts even better.
Especially the part where they're speaking Jive, which is "translated" into a thick Bavarian dialect, including subtitles saying something completely different:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEkI0cH_rK4
And for some reason, they translated the movie's title to "Die unglaubliche Reise in einem verrückten Flugzeug" (The Incredible Journey on a Crazy Airplane).
- That’s fun :)
  alt-text: map of “"AIRPLANE!" (1980) - international release names translated to English”
  
  IS THERE A PILOT ON THE PLANE?
  How lmao
  
  Fun fact: in Brazil this movie is infamously called Fasten your Seatbelts, the Pilot is Gone!.
  
  Hey we are flying!
- I had it on DVD and the French title translates to "Is there a pilot on this airplane?"
  
  I just checked what it's called in my country (Slovakia): Pripútajte sa, prosím!
  "Buckle up, please!"
  
  Same name in Polish... I mean after translation.
  
  Why would they not just name it "L'AVION!"?
- "Hey, we're flying!" in Finnish. "Hei, me lennetään!"
- I forgot about that. Glorious.

It really is. 44 year old movie and all of the jokes still land. Gen Z kids will especially appreciate the white flight attendant speaking in Jive to the black passengers.
- it was a fellow passenger that spoke jive, and the Brady Bunch mom to boot!
  e. am stupid, was leave it to beaver mom
  
  My bad, yeah it was a passenger, she steps in for the flight attendant.
  I'm going to watch Airplane tonight.
  
  Yes! Minor correction: it was Barbara Billingsley (the mom from "Leave it to Beaver").
- Showed my Pilipino wife who's only been here a few years. She was crying.

Would you like something to read?
Do you have anything light?
How about this leaflet, "Famous Jewish Sports Legends?"
- I mean, the producers (David and Jerry Zucker) are Jewish themselves, so these jokes in Airplane are self-deprecating
  EDIT: “were” to “are”; AFAIK the Zuckers are still with us 😅

God I love this movie. True irreverent humor that I don't want to know if people contained about. Nude breasts that perfectly fit the MPAA PG nudity guidelines of "brief and non-sexual". So many quotable one-liners. The sight gags were on point and perfectly timed. I WISH movies like this could be made. Scary Movie, Not Another Teen Movie, and all the other parody movies are great, but do not hold a candle to the Airplane! movies.
- Naked Gun is another great one.
  Kentucky Fried Movie is up there as well.
  
  "It's true what they say, cops and women don't mix. It's like eating a spoonful of Drano; sure it'll clean you out, but it'll leave you hollow inside"
  I loved the Naked Gun movies.
  The Hot Shots movies were funny too.
  
  The obvious one is Blazing Saddles.
  Then there is "the gods must be crazy" which I thought was amazing
  
  Top Secret
  Black Dynamite

I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
- Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines
  
  Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.

Do people here think this is offensive to Jews?
- I don't (and I'm not Jewish), but I can see how it might.
  The way I see it, if it was a joke to poke fun and it was good-natured, it shouldn't be offensive. I mean the Zucker brothers who were writers on the movie are themselves Jewish, so they thought it was hilarious. All that being said, I don't get to speak for Jews as to what they find offensive.
  
  I’m just curious because I’m Jewish and I don’t know of any Jews who would find this offensive.
  If the plane was rubbing its hands together and yelling “oy vey shut it down” I’d probably hear a dog whistle somewhere. Still wouldn’t get offended tho. I’d just know they’re a special type of moron.
- It might offend some overly sensitive Israelis or Zionists but they are not representatives for all Jews.
  
  I’m not sure you’ve met a real Israeli in your life if you genuinely think this would be offensive to them.
- The directors (Zucker brothers) are themselves Jewish. Any cancel culture reaction would as silly as the fake-controversy over Speedy Gonzalez, everyone in Mexico who heard about it were scratching their heads in puzzlement, how some white people who got hold of a bullhorn puffed themselves up like a peacock in ~~heat~~ virtuous "white savior who knows better than us" gatekeeping.
- Maybe if it were an ad for an airline.
  I can't really imagine why people would think so, in context if the movie.

"Surely you can't be serious."
- I am serious, and stop calling me Shirley.
  
  I just wanted to say good luck, we're all counting on you.

Oh sir…? I speak jive :)
- "Shieeet!"
  *Golly

I preferred Blazing Saddles myself
- "Where all the white women at?"
- This was the absolute pinnacle of comedy IMO.

People have gotten less sensitive over time, we just don't laugh at someone saying the n word or making light of sexual assault any more. I grew up on the dark web and the things people say/do nowadays blows even some of the worst stuff I seen there out of the water. Society is maturing, not regressing. Ignore the whingings of hack comedians who still think squinty Asian eyes and bad accents are the pinnacle of humor.

It's fine, you can still sell it in China, so no big deal.

This movie is straight Gold.

Airplane 2:
https://youtu.be/5CXeHk9W-iw?si=LMv-hzKpOmtFO1E0
- It really bugs me that YouTube have started adding tracking to the end of their links recently https://youtu.be/5CXeHk9W-iw
  
  It's interesting because they switched share URLs to a short domain (youtu.be/blah), but now that they have a tracking identifier, the URLs are longer than the regular video URLs (youtube.com/watch?v=blah)
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://piped.video/5CXeHk9W-iw
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://piped.video/5CXeHk9W-iw?si=LMv-hzKpOmtFO1E0
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
- Which was OK; it didn’t have any of the original directors attached to it.

- Not a native speaker but I have been learning norwegian for a while. The first translation is the most correct one.

Freedom of expression.

This and blazing saddles could not be made today.
- Blazing Saddles openly called out racism and made it the butt of almost all of its jokes. I think both it and Airplane could be made today, and would be received well. Why do you think differently?
  
  Idk maybe the sheer number of racial slurs said by white characters. I don't think that would fly in today's political landscape.
- Of course not! A studio would take one look at the script and say "hey! These movies already exist!"
  
  Now, in all fairness, when did that ever stop the bastards
  
  No they wouldn't. That logic has not stopped one single, shitty remake and almost all of them have been worse than the originals. So bad we forget they even exist. Robocop, Mummy, Red Dawn, Total Recall come to mind... garbage. I think Road House, Twister, and Mr & Mrs Smith are getting remakes this year, and they don't look good either.
- Hate to tell you this but in case you thought cancel culture was a recent phenomenon: Richard Pryor (the co-star of Blazing Saddles) was arrested for foul-language during his stand-up routine the same year Blazing Saddles came out.
  https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-12-12/5-comics-arrested-onstage#:~:text=Richard%20Pryor%2C%201974&text=%E2%80%9CHe%20was%20playing%20a%20huge,released%20on%20a%20%24500%20bond
  
  While I agree with your point, Richard Pryor was not in blazing saddles.
  
  Cleavon Little, not Pryor.
  https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001476/
- Blazing Saddles would be called dated and "done before."
  It was originally made as a way to laugh at Westerns, which, up to that point, had dominated the market. A lot of the tropes and plot lines the movie rips on are explicitly there because they were usually in these "safe" Westerns.
  
  Mel Brooks sort of put the fork in Westerns. They were maybe dying anyway, but after Blazing Saddles they had to change pretty significantly.
  He also got everyone to laugh at all the little polite racist themes that were super common in Westerns. He hung a pretty big lamp on that stuff. You couldn't do it again, because we'd all just laughed at how stupid it was.
  As for people who say it's too offensive for today's audience, idk that they ever realized they were being laughed at, not with.
- They absolutely could. If Dave Chappelle can do 5 hours of shitting on trans people, a Jewish writer can write a scene where a plane is wearing a tallit with a beard.
- Well no, if someone tried to make those movies today people would say that it's been done.
  
  They'd also have to be really quick with filming
- They made a CGI Blazing Saddles for kids not that long ago, Mel Brooks was involved too. Paws of Fury (2022) starring Michael Cera and Ricky Gervais. I watched it out of curiosity, it was pretty mid but for a kids movie it wasn't that bad.