Airplane II: The Sequel (1982)

Airplane II: The Sequel is the kind of comedy that doesn’t so much tell jokes as fire them from a Gatling gun, stuffing every scene with absurdist sight gags, deadpan one-liners, and shameless parodies of earnest disaster-movie heroics—only this time the “plane” is headed for space. Its special pleasure is how confidently it commits to nonsense: the future is sleek, the stakes are ridiculous, and the movie keeps undercutting its own tension with perfectly timed stupidity. Not every gag lands (it really is hit-and-miss), but the hits come often enough—and hard enough—that you’ll forgive the groaners just to stay in the rhythm. If you like your comedies loud, punny, and proudly juvenile, this is a surprisingly cozy return to a world where logic is optional and laughter is the only life-support system that matters.

Airplane II: The Sequel is clearly trying to bottle the original’s lightning again—same basic setup, same deadpan chaos, just swapped into a space-shuttle gimmick. The problem is you can feel the desperation: a lot of the jokes play like reheated leftovers, and once the early burst of gags passes, the movie starts to sag as it leans on familiar beats instead of surprising you. If you loved Airplane! because it felt fresh and relentlessly inventive, this one may come off flat and thin, more like an imitation than an escalation. Still, if you’re in the mood for silly, rapid-fire spoofing and don’t mind a retread, there are enough scattered one-liners and committed performances to kill 80 minutes without asking much of you.