A Wing and a Prayer

Just when you thought it was safe to take to the skies: another awful aircraft movie is churned out. In the tradition of all bad disaster movies (in both senses of the word) this film has no redeeming elements, and provides an excellent case study on what to avoid when attempting character development, suspense or special effects. The foremost failing of the flying flop is its assumption that the viewer cares about the central characters. The only reason we may feel sorrow for these people is for their lack of acting talent. In scenes in which the female lead is 'crying' no tears appear in her eyes, let alone the viewer's. The rest of her time is spent cold-heartedly bossing around air traffic controllers while various planes almost collide with each other. Meanwhile, her 'husband' (you can almost feel the lack of chemistry between the two) mirrors his wife by barking orders at an inept pilot and co-pilot--who seemingly know nothing about emergency procedures--and spends the rest of his time nervously flailing his limbs and running his fingers through his hair as though on a prolonged caffeine high. After the plane defies physics by sliding around the airport on landing (obviously achieved by an undercranked camera, as vehicles in the background of the shot show), a suitably awful line is delivered to end the film. A survivor (of course, you also qualify as a survivor if you've sat through the length of the film) suggests, on how to return home: "How about we take a really slow boat". A more suspenseful two hours could be spent watching paint dry.

This was an interesting movie, but laughable if you're trying to learn more about how air traffic controllers actually operate. They work in the dark (not in a well-lit room as in the movie) for one. Up until recently, they did have sub-standard equipment dating back to the Dark Ages. Lots of smaller, towered airports still have old equipment to this day...scary. One funny thing that I noted in the movie was during some of the outdoor scenes in the "rain"...you could see a reflection of the crew aiming water hoses up in the air to create the effect of rain. The ending was a complete joke. I like Claudia Christian a lot, but even she doesn't make this movie very watchable...avoid it except when in desperate need of entertainment.

Air traffic controllers are proffessionals doing a high pressure job where other people would buckle under the pressure. They are higly trained coping with massive responsibility and do a great job. This movie does no justice to these hard working folks.

The writing team have no idea how air traffic controllers work, otherwise they would never have made so many mistakes. The head controller starts bawling her eyes out when she finds out her husband is on the flight, talk about being cool under pressure. And then she leaves her post to greet her husband at the runway (dont forget there are other planes stacked up in the sky at this time). How unproffessional and selfish is this woman?!

The pilots are asking the husband (an air traffic controller) what to do (pilots are trained for emergencies). Also the husbands hair must be covered with buckets of gel for his hair to stay in place during the ordeal.

The passengers on this plane are very calm when they see the wing on fire - surprisingly there is no "Airplane" style mass hysteria in this movie!

The plane lands, aquaplanes and does a 360 spin - The passengers make an emergency exit and then stand a few metres away from the plane gawping - the plane was on fire - it could still blow up!

The really awful aspect of this movies is that eight members have given this movie a ten star rating!! They probably believe that this is how Air Traffic controllers and pilots do their jobs - the writer of this movie should do us a favour and strap himself onto the wing of the plane and say a prayer.

It seems strange knowing A WING AND A PRAYER was made as comparatively as recent as 1998 because I could have sworn this might have originally have been called AIRPORT 71 , 73 , 76, or 81 . Anyone else think it was written when disaster movies were all the rage in the cinematic world ? Anyone else think there might be a good reason it's been lying on a shelf for twenty five years ?

Having said that it might have actually have been written before the invention of the airplane , how else can you explain the writers getting away with a sequence of " he woke up and it was all a bad dream " very early in the film ? I guess being a TVM they can get away with this sort of red herring

Oh yes it's a TVM so we have to endure a lot of lovey dovey stuff between the two protagonists thereby holding up the story , but it's not much of a story as we're treated to all the trademark cardboard cutouts on a plane journey to boredom . There's the arrogant philistine , the ballsy stewardess , the cute kid but thankfully the singing nun and the alcoholic priest missed their flight and anything that can go wrong will , as long as it's not going to cut into the budget because this is a TVM remember

I'm not normally one to be petty about these things but since this film is so rubbish I thought I'd point out that, at one point the pilot of the longhorn flight (the guy) is shown with no steering wheel in his hands: he is just holding his clenched fists in position (look to bottom left of the screen). This is made even more funny because he is overacting the way the turbulence is affecting his arms. Once I'd seen the shot of no wheel between his hands, I couldn't help but burst out laughing every time he tried to be serious about their situation. I can't remember where abouts it is though since I saw it on TV and didn't (wouldn't in hindsight) record it. The directing almost as bad as the acting. Just thought I'd mention it for those who like to laugh about how terrible some films are. 1/10, unless you rate it for its comic value.