When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Rushed together under the success of the first one, the nastiness of getting this released. The jokes are mostly unfunny, the set-up forced, and the slugs at the "Airport" series forced rather than fully plotted. This takes the bomb plot of the first film and puts it into the hands of Sonny Bono who buys a bomb in the airport gift shop before boarding a super sonic jet heading for the moon. Once again, Robert Hays is estranged from fiancée Julie Hagerty, having had another breakdown somewhere in between the two movies, and is desperate to get her back. Somehow discovering that Bono has a bomb, Hays becomes a hero again, after the pilots (once again lead by Peter Graves) are afflicted by poisonous gas let out of the computer system let out by a Hal like mind. The first movie was hysterically funny because every gag seemed to be choreographed rather than just tossed on for cheap laughs. The gags here are either repeated or weakly placed without regards to the outcome or the placement. Gone are Leslie Nielsen (seen only in an obvious filler flashback) and Robert Stack, here replaced in a different part by William Shatner, obviously spoofing his "Star Trek" role, and he gets the funniest visual gag. Lloyd Bridges and Stephen Stucker are back as are a few of the same passengers, with Ann Nelson very funny in her cameo, but poor Lee Bryant reduced to further hysterics that uses a flashback and comes off as more gratuitous than funny. I missed Lorna Patterson, seen in the same flashback, but a definite sad absence. I wanted to see more of future soap diva Louise Sorel, seen briefly as a nurse.A sad follow-up to one of the greatest comedies ever made took the spoof out of filmmaking until the "Naked Gun" series came along. In watching the two films back to back, the second film's weaknesses become all the more apparent.

Ken Finkleman takes over as writer/director with the departure of Jim Abrahams and David Zucker. The movie recycles a lot of the jokes from the first movie. The main differences are that they're going into space, Leslie Nielsen is only in archival footage, and there is a bit of nudity.Striker (Robert Hays) escapes from the loonie bin to come rescue Elaine (Julie Hagerty) on the inaugural flight of the space shuttle Mayflower. Captain Oveur (Peter Graves) is piloting the shuttle, and Striker is forced to fly the plane once again.The repeating of many of the jokes from the first movie is probably very necessary. The style of the franchise hasn't changed. I do like the new joke of Striker's drinking problem. However, the freshness of the original isn't there anymore.

As if to prove that nothing succeeds like imitation, producer Howard W. Koch takes the plots, characters and gags from the first film (1980) and recycles them in a spoof that has intrepid pilot Striker (Robert Hays) and his faithful assistant Elaine (Julie Hagerty) trying their best to stop a passenger-laden aircraft from being incinerated by the sun. Jokes come thick and fast in this ninety-minute piece - so fast, in fact, that if we blink an eye we are likely to miss them. While some of them are extremely funny, many of them might also be considered extremely sexist, involving nymphomaniac virgins (a deliberate contradiction), clerics giving blow-jobs, repeated close-ups of female breasts. Other jokes might be thought of as simply taboo in today's world (for example, implied references to pedophilia and/or bestiality). Nonetheless AIRPLANE 2 offers a good example of great character actors from US television of the Sixties and Seventies - Lloyd Bridges, Chad Everett, Peter Graves, Chuck Connors - being willing to make fun of themselves on screen. They might have had no choice (especially if their found work difficult to come by after their respective series had concluded), but they clearly relish the opportunity to deliver their ridiculous lines with deadpan seriousness. Shatner is especially good as a service commander charged with the responsibility of bringing the stricken ship to a safe landing (he fails, by the way).

You do need to watch Aiplane first, but this is a good laugh in its own right. Most of the favourite characters are here, this time in the first passenger space shuttle to the moon: Julie Hagerty as Elaine, torn between weak boyfriend Simon (Chad Everett) and battle wounded Striker (Robert Hays) who sneaks on to the shuttle then has to pilot it home.The cockpit crew this time around consists of Oveur, Unger and Dunn who had previously served together in the Air Force ("That's right. Dunn was over Unger and I was over Dunn.... So, you see, both Dunn and I were under Oveur, even though I was under Dunn").The misunderstandings are still there: (Can I ask you a question? What is it? It's an interrogative statement, used to test knowledge. But that's not important now) Great to see some old-timers: Chuck Connors as Sarge, Lloyd Bridges as McCrosky (I love the gag where he poses against a desk in front of a photo of him posing against a desk, in front of a photo of him...). As this is a sort of Star Trek version, it's brilliant to see William Shatner in a gloriously mad cameo.Even as a Brit 30 years on I can get the gags about Ronald Reagan and the 'Psycho Month' magazine with Alexander (I'm in charge) Haig on the cover.I love the trial sequence with Raymond Burr as the judge. Listen to the prosecutor's footsteps. I missed that on the first couple of viewings. The jive testimony "So Blood hammered out and jammed jet ship. Tightened that bad sucker inside the runway like a mother. Sheeet." (translated as: So Mr Striker took control and landed that plane safely. Golly!). I do think it was a mistake to revisit the 'hysterical woman' sequence, not because it isn't funny but because we see Leslie Nielsen in a flashback from Airplane and he is sadly missed from Airplane 2. The best sequence is the 'Buddy couldn't handle it' one but it should have been cut at 'I don't think I'll ever get over Macho Grande'.I also love the sequence where the Japanese and Chinese guys overhear Ted and Elaine's conversation. The Japanese guy understands English so when he hears 'this ship could blow any second' he spits out his drink. The Chinese asks what that was and the Japanese guy translates. Now the Chinese guy spits out his drink. The timing is perfect.Yeah. Plenty still to like here.