Airplane!

***

I am serious… and don’t call me Shirley.

This is a great fount of quotes. But quotable movies are not always the best movies. Take Anchorman as an example. There are tons of funny and memorable quotes in that movie, but the story is weak and the characters seem absurd. I would say that the characters in this tend toward the absurd, but that the story is compelling. Having never seen the movies that this is satirizing, I may find the story more exciting than if I knew the bases of the parodies.

It is clearly a movie from the 1970s, even though it was released in 1980. As a product of the 70s a lot of it seems pretty offensive with 21st century eyes. My guess is that it was moderately offensive at the time as well. My biggest complaint about this movie is that it isn’t The Naked Gun. That is an unreasonable criticism and this movie clearly helped pave the way for the later adaptation of “Police Squad.” The biggest surprise in this is that its star, Robert Hays, did not go onto bigger things. Even Steve Guttenberg got big after Police Academy. Hays’ love interest, Julie Hagerty, had a little more success in her career, but she also did not hit those Guttenberg heights.

The movie is 41 years old now and 20 years ago I would have said that this was a must-see movie. While its significance in the annals of film history may be great, this is not Die Hard. Die Hard still holds up as a good movie, but has the weight of many copycats on its back. This is more like The French Connection, which no longer feels like a good movie but has influenced many very good movies.

Blue Streak

**

Recently I recorded some of my memories from the house that my grandparents had in the Catskills until I was about 20. One of the memories I have is of going to a movie theater that my great-uncle worked at. I remember looking up at the booth and wondering what it looked like inside there. I probably watched five movies there, but I really don’t remember. Somehow I remember watching Blue Streak. For some reason my memory has merged this with Hollywood Homicide, but who knows why. Feel free to leave a comment if you have a theory. But that is why I have chosen this forgettable Martin Lawrence vehicle. Here are my thoughts as I watch(ed) the movie in 2021.

1. This theme song is terrible. Could they not get SWV (Sisters with Voices)? Also, most of the music in this is pretty bad.
2. Redfoot from The Usual Suspects is the villain in this!
3. Dave Chappelle is in this!
4. I knew that was John Hawkes! I didn’t know he was getting movie roles in 1999. My first memory of him is from “Deadwood.”
5. I love how the security guards in this movie look like real guards and behave like real ones, not the elite commandos from Oceans 11 type movies.
6. This police officer just looked at the roof of his car and sensed to duck from a falling man he couldn’t see. This reminds me of Dark Knight.
7. If your plan is to steal a stone and then keep it for yourself so you wouldn’t need to share it…why shoot your partner before you have the jewel and alert the police? That is ridiculous.
8. I think the math works on cutting a zip line and crashing like one floor below. But why would the zipper you hold stay attached to the cable so you wouldn’t just fall straight down? I think I may have more questions than answers in this movie.
9. What you gonna do with one shoelace? Floss your ass? Ha, I gotta go!
10. Future Oscar winner Octavia Spencer is in this!
11. This is competently directed.
12. I don’t trust this captain (see above photo of Graham Beckel). He’s been a dirty cop with the LAPD for 60 years, dating back to his time in the movie L.A. Confidential!
13. Luke Wilson is really playing up the boring white guy character.
14. It’s a cute premise – criminal has to pretend to be a detective in order to get back to the 17 million dollar jewel he hid before being arrested.
15. Police brutality is played for laughs. It’s…awkward.
16. And…the extremely rude insult is to call Martin Lawrence…”gay.”
17. I don’t care what time of year it is. Running in a pants and a leather jacket in L.A. seems awful.
18. Of course he drops his stolen diamond into a giant box of drugs. He has to take it out to look at it and kiss it because, of course he does.
19. The key to enjoying this is to just go along for the ride and accept that these are just setups for individual Martin Lawrence setpieces.
20. Not to be overly critical, but why would the Mexican Border Agents permit a man who illegally enters via speeding cop car, who then proceeds to fatally shot someone in their country, both leave and come back in without even checking his ID. I just cannot accept that as realistic. Everything up and until this point, sure, extremely believable, but this? No! Martin Lawrence, you have gone too far.