David Zucker

In Airplane (1980), people speak with the authority that disaster films require, even when their lines make no sense. David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker keep the performances serious, however foolish the dialogue becomes. We laughed at verbal misunderstandings we could hear coming, because the cast treated the nonsense as something that urgently needed saying. That straight-faced delivery accounts for much of the film's success. It is an excellent comedy, and its occasional feeble pun is a small but noticeable price to pay.

The partnership came before the breakthrough: Zucker began working with Jerry Zucker and Abrahams in a comedy troupe. He co-wrote the troupe's sketch-based first feature in 1977, and the three shared writing and directing duties on Airplane. They took their parody into Elvis and spy-film territory with Top Secret (1984). We should credit all three for the control of tone that makes Airplane work.

Zucker often keeps an actor serious in the foreground while something ridiculous happens behind them. An actor who starts signalling the joke can distract from what is happening around them. But Airplane also shows how much this depends on the writing: some misunderstandings are too obvious, and we occasionally wished the writers had found a better line. The inventiveness elsewhere makes those lapses forgivable, though anyone with a low tolerance for corny wordplay will notice them.

Solo directing began with The Naked Gun (1988), with Leslie Nielsen as Frank Drebin and Pat Proft among Zucker's writing partners. It continued the use of sustained, closely packed gags rather than abandoning the earlier approach. The later work includes BASEketball (1998) and a horror-parody sequel in 2003, and the recurring criticism is of broader, more recycled comedy. We would not recommend those later titles simply because Zucker's name is on them. Start with Airplane, particularly if over-serious disaster films have ever tried your patience.