After watching the original AIRPORT with my entire family on Memorial Day, it's put me in the mood to go back and watch all those 70's disaster flicks this summer. After enjoying the original and enduring its horrible sequel, Airport 1975, we now come to AIRPORT 1977. The tale of an art-filled luxury 747 that crashes into the ocean and comes to a perilous rest on an underwater shelf, its filled with a better cast, better performances and slightly better writing than '75. At times exciting, at times stupid, its a mixed bag of good performances that rise above the material like Jack Lemmon, Darren McGavin, Christopher Lee and Jimmy Stewart. But it's also plagued by lazy writing, some boring sequences and some over the top acting from Lee Grant and another godawful song from a passenger in the lounge. You would think after Helen Reddy's stinker pop song in 1975 they would have learned SOMETHING....
The best parts of the film are the plane's crash into the oil rig and ocean and the NAVY rescue sequences, which show real Navy procedures for ocean bound rescue. AIRPORT was an A, AIRPORT 75 was a D, 1977 earns a C. It's far better than 75, but then again, what isn't....oh yeah, I just remembered, Airport 1979, oh man, will I actually watch that again? Maybe as a comedy.......
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