Airplane! (1980)'s activity

Airplane!'s place in movie history is undeniable even if the genre it lampoons, the air disaster movie, feels oddly archaic, and I thought I had I soured on it long ago after a friend of mine made the "Don't call me Shirley" joke once too many times. Watching it again (with the risqué parts included - THAT wasn't on TV! - and here I thought Scary Movie's vulgarity was its own innovation), I can't say I get EVERY reference, as I'm relatively weak on popular 70s movies), but it wins by having a PLOT. Or close enough... a lot of subplots don't really have a pay-off. That's where the spoof comedies of this era beat out the "____ Movie " of the '00s. The joke per square inch is lower, but there's more story. And the Zucker/Abrahams team knows it's introducing a new style, because it starts pretty normal and the jokes get more and more rapid-fire until they're wall-to-wall by the last reel. Sure, I could do without the racially-motivated gags and Captain Oveur's weird pedo sequence, but the deadpan quartet of Graves, Nielsen (who make a career's last act of this), Bridges and Stack is a highlight, and I mostly smiled and smirked through the picture.