Funniest Comedy Ever, According to Science? This Leslie Nielsen Classic With 97% on Rotten Tomatoes

Summary:

• According to statistics, the 1980’s Airplane! is the funniest comedy in history – during the screening, the viewers laughed three times per minute.
• Airplane!, by Jim Abrahams and the Zucker Brothers, gave birth to a new genre of comedy – parody with a straight face.
• Airplane! became a success for its time, grossing nearly $85 million and forever putting Leslie Nielson's name on the list of Hollywood's best comedy actors.

Various lists of the world's best movies are fun and exciting, but they shouldn't be taken too seriously. However, it was decided to measure the quality of comedy films using statistical methods. The study, conducted by streaming provider Lovefilm, checked how often viewers laughed while watching classic and modern comedies.

First place went to Airplane! by Jim Abrahams and the Zucker Brothers – viewers laughed three times per minute during the screening.

Airplane! Was the Beginning Of a New Comedy Genre

In 1979, directors David Zucker, Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams (abbreviated to ZAZ) offered Leslie Nielsen, who had previously only played serious roles, the small but important part of Dr. Rumack in their debut film Airplane!.

A year later, this movie introduced Nielsen-the-comedian to the world and actually created a new genre – parody with a straight face.

Traditionally, comedy in Hollywood has been a world of comedians who could save even a bad script with their antics and funny voices. ZAZ, however, hired not comedians but dramatic actors.

More specifically, they hired actors from second-rate movies and TV series who were used to delivering lines with pathos and serious faces. ZAZ believed that if they emphasized the absurdity of such phrases and put them in the mouths of actors who usually utter them in serious productions, the viewers would die of laughter.

When Airplane! was finished, it turned out to be long and boring. Fortunately, ZAZ came up with a great way to shorten it – the directors traveled to universities with a rough cut of the film, showed it to students, and cut out scenes that did not provoke loud laughter.

Airplane! Made Leslie Nielsen an International Comedy Star

The result was a one-and-a-half-hour movie full of gags that is now considered one of the funniest and most successful comedies in Hollywood history. In 1980, Airplane! grossed nearly $85 million and made international stars of ZAZ and Leslie Nielsen.

By the end of the 1980s, the ZAZ trio had disbanded, but all three continued to work on comedies. Leslie Nielsen also stayed in the comedy genre.

When the actor died in 2010, the obituaries called him a comedian, and he probably would have liked that – although he spent half his career in dramas, his biggest dream was to get more comedy roles.

The roles of Dr. Rumack and Detective Drebin from The Naked Gun were enough to write Nielsen's name into the history of Hollywood comedy forever. And remember – don’t call him Shirley.

Source: Forbes