2 out of 5

Director: Ken Finkleman

Airplane II is funny. I laughed out loud at several scenes. Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty reprise their roles as Ted Striker – the brave, self-doubting pilot – and Elaine – the forever suffering stewardess who, yknow, cant deal with all of his self-doubting. Something happened after movie one, and now shes about to marry Simon (Chad Everett), whos championing this new fang-dangled spaceship to mars that Striker swears isnt fit to fly. Theres your outline, now overlay the general plot from movie one on top of it and there you go. As I said – its funny. I laughed. But at some point, I realized that I was laughing at the ghost of movie one, and then I missed Leslie Nielsen, and then I was sort of waiting for it to end. Dont get me wrong, this has some great bits, but the greatest bits are complete rehashes of the first, and the almost great bits dont have the same sense of innocence… as Ebert remarked on the ZAZ formula, it works because no ones in on the joke. Airplane II attempts that – w/o any of the ZAZs – but its a tricky balance, and so theres one too many stupid joke approaching glances at the camera to really make it happen. Funny stuff, but if you watch it directly after movie 1 you might feel like its an insult.