By Richard Winters
My Rating: 1 out of 10
4-Word Review: They become flight attendants.
Philo (Brett Cullen) and George (Don Most) are training to become airline pilots, but an unexpected calamity during the flight stimulator test causes them to flunk out. Without a job, or money they decide to enter into a school that trains people to become flight attendants. They feel this way they’ll still be able to be up in the air and can also hit-on all the hot women. They’re class is full of misfits, but somehow they all manage to graduate despite the presence of Miss Grummet (Vicki Frederick) who runs the school and tries to make each of their lives a living hell. After graduation the students get a job with Stromboli airlines, but Miss Grummet is onboard and wants to make sure things do not go as planned while a mad bomber (Alan Rosenberg) wants to blow the aircraft up.
This was another in a long line of Police Academy imitators that did nothing but make that one, which wasn’t too great to begin with, seem like a masterpiece. The film, which per later interviews with star Sandahl Bergman where she attests the cast and crew including the director were snorting cocaine during the production, is nothing but a barrage of lame jokes and uninspired storyline making it pretty much dead on arrival from the first frame in. It doesn’t even have all that much nudity and what little it does comes from gals looking well over 30. The women cast in the leads keep their clothes on even though they’re far more attractive. Judy Landers, who plays a hooker who speaks in the most annoying Flossie-like accent, in order to conform to the caricature of a NY streetwalker, I found to be the most perplexing. She’s clearly sexy and yet is never seen naked even though she goes to a Dr.’s office for a medical exam, but just as she’s set to remove her bra the camera cuts away, which will frustrate certain viewers as the only point for watching this vapid thing is to see some good-looking flesh and if it can’t even succeed with that then it’s pointless to sit through.
I found the characters to be the most irritating as everything gets approached from a 13-year-old perspective with no inkling of nuance. Star Cullen is a prime example as he plays this pilot who can’t see without his glasses even though most people who use them can still make out things when they’re not on but they’re just real fuzzy and yet here this guy doesn’t know when he’s in a shower room full of naked women. The thick coke bottle type of glasses that he does wear was severely dated as by the 80’s the technology had improved that people with bad eyesight could wear lenses that weren’t so thick and obvious.
Wendi Jo Sperber, who is slightly overweight though the film acts like she’s ‘obese’, gets stuck with a part that’s genuinely insulting as it does nothing but make fun of her few extra pounds the whole way through. At one point it even has her spotting a cheese cake in a refrigerator and going ‘oink, oink’, which I found to be quite shallow as they’re can be many reasons for why someone as a bigger body type than others that has nothing to do with overeating.
I did enjoy Mary Cadorette who’s probably best known for playing in the short-lived ‘Three’s a Company’ spin-off ‘Three’s a Crowd’. She definitely gives a likable performance of a terminal klutz. While her clumsiness does get overplayed, with none of the pratfalls ever being funny, I felt the way she overcame her problem by going through hypnosis was a cop-out. A good story should have a character grow and succeed through their own initiative versus having it all go away with the literal snap-of-a-finger.
The worst part may be the ending where the film inadvertently turns into a airplane disaster flick, which has been done better in many other parodies. The mad bomber is too obvious and everyone should’ve been eyeing him suspiciously from the get-go instead of having him being ignored until it was too late. The film should’ve played against type with this part by having the nut turn-out to being what initially seemed like a sweet old lady, or someone else you wouldn’t expect, but of course that would’ve required creativity, which filmmakers here were clearly lacking. The film does stand out in one way as it holds the record for being the most played movie on the Comedy Central cable network, which says more about their subgrade level of programming than anything else.
My Rating: 1 out of 10
Released: August 20, 1986
Runtime: 1 Hour 29 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Ken Blancato
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Available: VHS, DVD-R, Amazon Video, Tubi
Scopophilia 