THE onslaught of one-liners and schoolboy wordplay in Airplane! (Pearl, 9.30pm) is so relentless that in the end the most dour viewer will be won over. Or exhausted. This was one of the earlier movies from the daffy writing and directing team of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker, who later went on to produce The Naked Gun films and who had earlier made The Kentucky Fried Movie, the vulgar but funny college party film based on sketches performed by a satirical group at the University of Wisconsin.
Airplane! is loaded with slapstick stupidity and features tongue-in-cheek performances from familiar television personalities - familiar at least in the US. The co-pilot of the plane on which the action happens is basketball legend Kareem Adbul-Jabbar.
Robert Hayes is Ted Striker, a failed fighter pilot who is forced to take control of a passenger jet when the pilot and co-pilot both become ill. Encouraged by his air hostess girlfriend (Julie Haggerty) and zany Dr Rumack (Leslie Nielsen), and receiving ground support from the even zanier Kramer (Robert Stack), Striker does his best to follow the incomprehensible instructions he is given. Meanwhile the passengers become berserk, sex-crazed and generally impossible.
Airplane!, it does not take much working out, is a spoof of films such as Airport, and particularly of Arthur Hailey's Zero Hour. The gags keep coming right through to the final credits. One of the most original - and the longest - is the conversation between the pilots and ground control as they prepare to take off. Airplane II: The Sequel came out in 1982 and featured William Shatner, the Star Trek commander who took the USS Enterprise where no man had taken it before.
BRIAN May's musical career spans almost 30 years, from the days he made his own guitar from bits of an old fireplace to the days he strutted around behind Freddie Mercury with the glam-group Queen. The Brian May Band - Live At Brixton Academy (World, 10.45pm) shows Brian these days, in the post-Mercury era. He still looks like he's dressed for an audition with the Bay City Rollers. The concert includes a handful of old Queen favourites (We Will Rock You, Hammer To Fall) as well as a tribute to Freddie Mercury, who died of AIDS in 1990.
IT is a good film, but there are still too many cliches in Dead Poet's Society (TDM Channel 1, 10.35pm). The American Dream, seize the day, carpe deum and the rest.
