thanks to some weird curse, we saw a lot of famous movies out of order—that curse was called "broadcast television", which tended to acquire broadcast rights only for less popular movies. the big hits rarely made it to TV broadcast, but there were a lot of crappy cash-in sequels and remakes and the like. so it was that Frisk and I saw Airplane II way before we ever saw the original. and I swear we did feel that put us at some subtle social disadvantage. "everyone" knew that Airplane! was a laugh riot, and yet we'd only seen the crummy retread.
it's not really that bad? but the movie strikes a lot of sour notes. they get edgier and nastier with the humor from time to time, and they take a few of the humorous tricks from the first movie (like the "deliberately take a question too literally" thing) and in the sequel they hammer those tricks into the ground and out the other side. also there's a dog named "Scraps" who seems to have been put in the movie specifically so they could film a trick scene with the dog...cute dog and cute scene, but I'm reminded of why W. C. Fields didn't like working with children or animals on screen: they stole the show. There's a horse in Preston Sturges's The Lady Eve that I may remember better than the whole rest of the movie.
but there's actually an interesting plot?! there's social commentary on corporate malfeasance and cutting corners to make deadlines, and silencing whistleblowers by pinning the label "crazy" on them? Challenger happened four years after Airplane II, by the way...
~Chara