Counting Every Single Joke in The Movie "Airplane!" (1980)

I've always thought that Airplane! is the funniest movie ever made, so I wanted to back up my subjective opinion with some data.

To the best of my ability, I counted exactly 271 jokes. That makes for an average of 3.079 jokes per minute for the entirety of the movie.

While counting, I also categorised the types of jokes: visual gags, sound effect gags, dialogue, and also took notice of things like the different comedy principles they use such as heightening, rule of thirds, running gags and subverting the expectations.

Here is a link to the google doc. (disregard spelling mistakes, I can barely type my name right)

Here is the TLDR:

Visual Gags IMO those are two types:

obvious ones, when it is front and centre for you to see (commander walking through the mirror, tower supervisor posing on the desk with the exact same photo behind him) background ones, which are more subtle and act as a "reward" for the people who notice them (whacking material magazine category, x-ray of lungs at the airport security). I noticed that the background visual gags are often used to make a moment or a scene a little bit more fun when it would otherwise be just an exposition.

Running Gags Plenty of those in the movie. The longest time from a setup to payoff is the entirety of the movie, as they setup a man waiting in the taxi in the opening scene and have him still waiting all the way until after the end credits. The commander choosing the wrong week to quit X is also a great one too.

Heightening This is a comedy principle connected to running gags. You repeat the exact same thing multiple times, but you start grounded, then you exaggerate on the second beat, and finally take it all the way to 11 on the third. (News getting a live memo -> news in Japan with a hand-drawn screen -> news in a tribe with sticks being the memo)

Dialogue

The dialogue is short, snappy, witty and effective. Some of the formulas they use are misunderstanding the question and answering the wrong one, taking things literally and of course wordplay and puns.

Subverting the expectations

One of the biggest strengths of this movie is that everyone plays it straight. Leslie Nielsen was considered a serious drama actor at the time. The main actress is supposed to be this classic old Hollywood, modest love interest, but she is constantly proven to be quite the dirty mind.

Overall, the pacing of this movie is relentless. Even if you didn't like a gag you don't have to wait long to get another one. It's a parody of "Zero Hour!" (1957) but you don't have to see the original to get all the jokes.

I made an in-depth video about all of this in which I go into a lot more detail and expand on things like layers in comedy, so if that tickles your fancy you can check it out here