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Airport '77
The third film in the classic franchise, Airport '77 is an overblown, airborne soap opera that, more than anything, provided this reviewer with a lot of unintentional laughs.
In this film, a billionaire art dealer named Philip Stevens (James Stewart) is having a showing of some his latest acquisitions at his palatial home and has decided to fly a select group of people to his home for a presentation of his new pieces in his own state of the art private airliner. A commercial pilot named Don Gallagher (Jack Lemmon) has been commissioned to fly the plane. A group of art thieves have managed to board the plane with the plan of stealing the art, crashing the plane in the Bermuda Triangle, and fleeing to South America. Unfortunately, their plan falls apart when the plane accidentally clips a cargo ship which malfunctions the plane and lands it at the bottom of the ocean.
Arthur Hailey, who wrote the best selling novel upon which the first film was based, is actually given screen credit for inspiring this melodramatic mess which not only provides the above mentioned primary plot, but attempts to layer that story with several mini-dramas centered around the allegedly doomed passengers. The most interesting of these stories revolves around an unhappy alcoholic named Karen Wallace (Lee Grant), trapped in a miserable marriage to an unscrupulous businessman (Christopher Lee) and having an affair with his assistant (Gil Gerard).
Anyone familiar with the first two films knows that one of the requirements of an Airport movie is that the pilot has to be having an affair with the head flight attendant (of course back in '77, I think it was still OK to say "stewardess") and she is trying to get him to put a ring on it. In the original film, it was Dean Martin and Jacqueline Bisset and in Airport 1975, it was Charlton Heston and Karen Black. In this film, it's Lemmon and Brenda Vaccaro, who have no chemistry, but mercifully, the time spent on this alleged romance is brief.
Though not the intention, there were a lot of things in this movie that had me laughing out loud and director Jerry Jameson has to take credit for most of them. I lost it when the thieves started pumping gas into the plane and the passengers started passing out...Joseph Cotten passing out right in the middle of pouring a glass of champagne had me on the floor. There also seemed to be a lot of confusion with the actors, especially some veterans who had been off the screen for years, where they didn't know exactly how they should be playing certain scenes. Cotten and two time Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland looked particularly confused throughout the film. Stewart also looked confused every moment he was onscreen. A physical altercation between Grant and Vaccaro was very funny. I also lost it when Lemmon's character, who went through hell to get off that plane and get help, ended up back inside the plane with Vaccaro five minutes before it was to sink to the ocean floor forever
Jameson seemed more concerned with the technical aspects of the story, but that didn't stop him from cramming the screen with a lot of once and future stars like Darrin McGavin, Robert Foxworth, Pamela Bellwood, M Emmett Walsh, Kathleen Quinlan, Robert Hooks, Monte Markham, Maidie Norman. and in his obligatory appearance in each film in the franchise, George Kennedy as Joe Patroni. If the truth be told, the only thing that made this movie worth watching was the flashy performance by Lee Grant.
The third film in the classic franchise, Airport '77 is an overblown, airborne soap opera that, more than anything, provided this reviewer with a lot of unintentional laughs.
In this film, a billionaire art dealer named Philip Stevens (James Stewart) is having a showing of some his latest acquisitions at his palatial home and has decided to fly a select group of people to his home for a presentation of his new pieces in his own state of the art private airliner. A commercial pilot named Don Gallagher (Jack Lemmon) has been commissioned to fly the plane. A group of art thieves have managed to board the plane with the plan of stealing the art, crashing the plane in the Bermuda Triangle, and fleeing to South America. Unfortunately, their plan falls apart when the plane accidentally clips a cargo ship which malfunctions the plane and lands it at the bottom of the ocean.
Arthur Hailey, who wrote the best selling novel upon which the first film was based, is actually given screen credit for inspiring this melodramatic mess which not only provides the above mentioned primary plot, but attempts to layer that story with several mini-dramas centered around the allegedly doomed passengers. The most interesting of these stories revolves around an unhappy alcoholic named Karen Wallace (Lee Grant), trapped in a miserable marriage to an unscrupulous businessman (Christopher Lee) and having an affair with his assistant (Gil Gerard).
Anyone familiar with the first two films knows that one of the requirements of an Airport movie is that the pilot has to be having an affair with the head flight attendant (of course back in '77, I think it was still OK to say "stewardess") and she is trying to get him to put a ring on it. In the original film, it was Dean Martin and Jacqueline Bisset and in Airport 1975, it was Charlton Heston and Karen Black. In this film, it's Lemmon and Brenda Vaccaro, who have no chemistry, but mercifully, the time spent on this alleged romance is brief.
Though not the intention, there were a lot of things in this movie that had me laughing out loud and director Jerry Jameson has to take credit for most of them. I lost it when the thieves started pumping gas into the plane and the passengers started passing out...Joseph Cotten passing out right in the middle of pouring a glass of champagne had me on the floor. There also seemed to be a lot of confusion with the actors, especially some veterans who had been off the screen for years, where they didn't know exactly how they should be playing certain scenes. Cotten and two time Oscar winner Olivia de Havilland looked particularly confused throughout the film. Stewart also looked confused every moment he was onscreen. A physical altercation between Grant and Vaccaro was very funny. I also lost it when Lemmon's character, who went through hell to get off that plane and get help, ended up back inside the plane with Vaccaro five minutes before it was to sink to the ocean floor forever
Jameson seemed more concerned with the technical aspects of the story, but that didn't stop him from cramming the screen with a lot of once and future stars like Darrin McGavin, Robert Foxworth, Pamela Bellwood, M Emmett Walsh, Kathleen Quinlan, Robert Hooks, Monte Markham, Maidie Norman. and in his obligatory appearance in each film in the franchise, George Kennedy as Joe Patroni. If the truth be told, the only thing that made this movie worth watching was the flashy performance by Lee Grant.