The Glade 4.0

For me, one of the funniest movies of the early 1980s is Airplane. The sequel was trying too hard and didn't have the same appeal. I'm his talking about the original here.

Discussing the movie with some friends recently we went to YouTube and showed clips to a couple of 17 year old girls in the room, both relatively bright, but neither was immerse in their parents entertainment culture. Both were not getting the jokes, at all. After we realized we were explaining every joke, which kills the funny, we gave up.

The old folk in the room were dumbfounded. We were laughing at the gags again even though we had heard them all many times before. Talking about it we realized how founded the script is in popular culture of that time and in references and homages to old movies, most of which the girls haven't seen, memes that are not pat of their universe.

It will remain funny for a lot of us, but Airplane is unlikely to attract fans in down generational audiences. Sad, but the reality of topical entertainment. I can see someone writing their thesis on the difference between lasting comedy in movies and the ones that are funny to one generation and totally lost on the next.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

I don't know. It may just have been that they didn't like that style of humor. They're still trying to make "parody" movies now, but they're doing it absolutely TERRIBLY (see Meet the spartans/Disaster movie/Scary Movie 2 on). Do those girls think Mel Brooks movies are funny? Do they like the Naked Gun? I never felt Airplane relied very heavily on referential humor (knowing the source material). It might have added to it, but it didn't detract from the film not knowing it. I had never seen Airplane 1973 (or whatever the title is) before I saw Airplane, and I first saw it many years after it's release. I was a fan of silly humor though, and have always enjoyed those films. To me, the joke wasn't the reference to the original film, it was the entire plane lining up to slap that hysterical woman (including nuns with baseball bats). It was every passenger hanging themselves halfway through his sob story.

There's still a huge market for Monty Python, so there's still a market for Airplane. It might just not be teenage girls.

I think you're right that comedy doesn't age well. It depends pretty heavily on the social climate in which it was conceived. I think stand-up comedy is an even more extreme example. I've tried watching some highly regarded stand-up routines from the 70s and 80s and most of them just weren't funny at all. Heck, I could go back and watch a stand-up routine that I thought was hilarious 5 or 10 years ago and it probably wouldn't be nearly as funny. Times change.

I was born a few years after Airplane was released, and I still enjoyed it and thought it was funny. But I'm sure there are jokes that I missed, or just some situations that weren't as funny to me because I grew up in a different era. It's certainly not a movie I'll keel over laughing out loud.

Even if a joke isn't a reference to something current, it could just be played out now. Maybe a joke/situation in Airplane was novel and hadn't really been done before, but chances are it's been copied many times by now, or at least been the inspiration for many similar jokes. A young person going back and watching Airplane would find these jokes boring and played out. It's like they've already been done many times before and so they come off as un-original, even if Airplane was actually the originator of that joke.

On the other hand, Monty Python and the Holy Grail was the funniest thing ever to 10-year old me.

I'll just put this here

My son turned 18 this year. He saw this a couple years ago, he damn near pissed his pants laughing.

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Raell Kromwell

Exception that prooves the rule?

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

It had its moments, but The Life of Brian was a better movie and doesn't get mentioned as often.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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Life of Brian contains nudity so is somewhat harder to show to teens.

Yes, because Graham Chapman's penis is so much more traumatizing to teenagers than the sex they are having and not telling you about.

(Actually, Graham Chapman's penis probably is traumatizing. That may be one of the worst nude scenes ever.)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I know that's one scene that's never leaving MY brain.

Everyone had to see his biggus dickus!

Surely they got some of the jokes?

Was going to make a "Don't call him Shirley" joke but alas, the limitations of this medium grow apparent.

Glad I'm not the only one

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Thank goodness Naked gun is still perfect.



"You're gonna have to give me a couple days on that one."

I'm not sure that the test for whether comedy is dated or not is "does a 17 year old get it".

The last time I cared about a 17 year old's opinion on something was definitely no later than my 18th birthday