Une fille aux commandes

Let me see we have a 13 year old girl who is on this private plane and she is being flown in to see her rich daddy.With her on his private jet is a personal secretary,some fat fellow who is about to die of a heart attack anyway,and the two pilots of the plane. Now the pilots are dumb and numb enough to fly into an electrical storm(I thought you could fly these babies over storms and the like).The pilots are gone,the fat man's life is over and done with and the secretary is out.Thus the 13 year old girl is left to save the day and the crew from disaster and a certain plane crash which ever comes first. This crap is too unbelieveable to witness.The 13 year old girl is bright enough cool enough savvy enough and brave enough to bring down a private jet and land it safely,even though it has a graping whole on the side of it.Only BuffygirlII herself can do something that if even left up to the best of private flight instructors would be quite a stretch. And in a thunderstorm no less. The makers of this film obviously thought a combination of GI Jane ,Buffy,and Now and Then would make for a great movie.Girls not boys are the heroes of our society today,no wonder they would have one bring down a jet aircraft with simple ease and with no training to boot.Hollywood loves this type of adventure now of having girls and women do things not only to the equal of boys and men ,but far better than they do. No red blooded boy with his head on his sholuder should see a minute of this trash.And neither should anyone else,it is stupid,sexist,insulting and patheic.The girl who is the hero in the film is reason enough to to read a book instead of watch this crap.But the question before the court is.What is Joe Matengna doing in a film like this?Does he need the money that bad? Hey Joe why don't you go on late night TV and infomerricals selling acting lessons like Russ Whitney sells real estate or Don Lapre sells classified ads? All the other actors in Airspeed ,including the 13 year old girl,sure could use some like yesterday.

Airspeed has led me to the conclusion that there is nary an original idea left in movies. The one category that fits the above description like jam on toast is the airplane disaster flick. What goes up must come down formula. Pretty straight forward.

So here we are with 'Airspeed'. A vapid entry into the airplane disaster genre that feels like it was cleared for television take-off. It deals with a teenage daughter of a software giant who gets trapped on flight 666. Bad weather, lightening strikes the plane and next you know she's gotta land the plane to ground safely.

I always like movies with an average everyday citizen being able to land the plane - no training needed - always brings a smile to my face. Makes me wonder why we need those highly trained pilots when all you gotta do is pull a lever and stick-shift.

This movie doesn't offer anything redeeming worth spending ninety minutes of your time on. It has the feel of a low budget and there's very little variety. Either we're on the plane listening to the girl or in the air traffic control tower listening to dialogue we've all heard before. I became so bored with the movie I couldn't help but pick holes in it. The rough acting, implausible technical aspects.

If it had succeeded in entertaining me maybe I wouldn't be so harsh. Was 'Turbulence' a good movie? No, not really. Did it entertain? Yes. Finally Joe Mantegna shouldn't be here slumming it for a second/third billed role. Fat Tony would be ashamed.

About the only good things that I can say about this movie is that the story isn't such a mess that you can't follow what is going on and all though there are a lot things wrong with this movie it probably could be far worse. The fact that nothing is REALLY bad and nothing is hardly any good just makes this movie dull. I have seen better "plane gets hit by lightning and gets in trouble" movies than this such as Panic in the Skies which wasn't all that good either but just reasonable. This movie gets a 3/10.

It was like watching a train wreck. Horrible, but I couldn't take my eyes off of it. The movie was much better muted. The acting seemed forced and half-hearted and you felt no sympathy for any of the characters. Avoid this one.

I work nights, so my nights off are filled with bad movies and infomercials at 3am. Airspeed was actually kind of fun in a "Mystery Science Theater 3000" sort of way. I never expect depth and find new ways to amuse myself at the absurdity. This movie is a stereotype, as mentioned in the other reviews. I won't rehash. That being said, most movies expect you to suspend disbelief for a little bit in order to enjoy the flick. I couldn't get past the fact that at 20-30,000 feet above the earth, the temperature of the air is beyond normal "cold" and a big hole in the plane would depressurise the cabin, sucking everything out into the big blue yonder. At skydiving height, yes, you can do neat heroic things like run a guy wire from one plane to the other and save lives. You can peek outside the back of a low flying aircraft like in the old war movies. Not on a jet. Sorry folks, it's not going to happen. Everybody would turn blue and die. Even the cute little girl who almost fell through the hole, lost a shoe to the great beyond, but managed to push herself away so she could get up and move about the aircraft. If it COULD be done, I do believe there are people insanely heroic enough to jump across on a tether and save the day...but not on this planet. Aside from that...one of the better flicks I've seen. I'd rate it up there with the USA Network movie called "Class Warfare". I was half asleep and missed seeing the contrived ending to that movie 10 minutes into it. I like it when movies can trip me up like that.