After seeing
Airport '77 a few days ago, I decided to check out "film zero" for disaster movies. 1970's
Airport had a lot of hype to live up to in my estimation: it is the first of the big budget, ensemble disaster films that were all the rage in the early to mid-seventies. Needless to say, it did not live up to the billing I set for it. It played out much like a sixties melodrama for the majority of the picture, with the "disaster" coming in the last third of the story. I can see why the makers of the sequels felt the need to tell their stories as actual airborne disasters.
Airport concentrates on the stories of all the characters, and actually has a decent plot for each. There's the elderly stowaway, looking for excitement, the airport administrator married to his job
then his wife, the married pilot who has gotten one of his stewardesses "in trouble", and the poor schlub at the end of his rope, desperately attempting insurance fraud to help his family out; each story plays out in its entirety.
The huge ensemble consists of all the stars of the day, and some from earlier: Burt Lancaster, Helen Hayes, Barbara Hale, Van Helfin, George Kennedy, Dean Martin, Jaqueline Bisset...the list is almost endless. Their parts actually had some meat to them, and this wasn't the usual parade of stars delivering lines for screen time. It was pretty impressive that way.
As a whole, I wasn't really impressed with
Airport as a crisis movie, but I do appreciate what was born from its production. Without it, we wouldn't have had such films as
Independence Day,
Con Air,
2012,
Earthquake......oh wait on second thought, allow me to place the blame for these films directly at the feet of
Airport. 6/10.
See you tomorrow, and GO WATCH A MOVIE!!
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