Airplane! 3: The Hijacking
Politico has some movie news:
David Zucker, the director and writer who helped create "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun" franchise has called on Hollywood's tiny but tightly knit Republican A-list crowd to help him make a broad yet unusually right-leaning political satire titled "An American Carol."
The low-budget indie co-stars Emmy winner Kelsey Grammer with Oscar-winner Jon Voight, cinema icon Dennis Hopper, model-heiress Paris Hilton and frequent Zucker stooge Leslie Nielsen in minor roles. Release is planned sometime by year's end; the director suggested Friday, Sept. 12, to coincide with the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Now there's a tasteful tribute. But why no role for O.J. Simpson?
Part of me wants to give Zucker the benefit of the doubt here -- the man has made some deeply funny movies in the past -- but he had his chance to show us that he could mix humor and politics when he did some anti-Democrat ads in 2006, and the results were…not inspiring:
The line "History has taught us that evil needs to be confronted, not appeased" has no place in a David Zucker film, unless Leslie Nielsen is saying it while Ricardo Montalban gives him a wedgie. And if you have any doubt that the new movie will be more of the same, Politico's plot summary should disabuse you of the notion:
In a climactic scene, [Michael] Moore's stand-in (here named "Michael Malone") finds political clarity at the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center while the admonishing ghost of George Washington (played by Voight) hovers nearby.
Caveat: If he works in a sequence where the next 9/11 is foiled by a heroic autopilot, I'll forgive everything else.
