Airplane!

Airplane! fundamentally revolutionized film comedy. Instead of casting comedians, it’s stacked with veteran dramatic actors known for serious roles. Legends Robert Stack, Peter Graves, and Lloyd Bridges played their over-the-top, ridiculous roles as if they were starring in a tense, gripping drama. It also introduced audiences to a new side of strait-laced dramatic actor Leslie Nielsen, whose flawless delivery of iconic lines, like “I am serious … and don’t call me Shirley,” launched him into a second career as a slapstick icon (The Naked Gun). It’s a scene-for-scene parody of the 1957 thriller Zero Hour! It effectively burst the bubble of the overly serious 1970s disaster-flick era, making those tropes virtually impossible for studios to take seriously again. Airplane! became a massive financial success and is routinely voted among the greatest comedies of all time, selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry. — Leila Melendez