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Friday, July 18, 2008
Hot air balloon movies: A short list?
With the MidFirst Ohio Challenge hot air balloon festival starting today in Middletown, I tried to think of good movies with hot air balloons.
The first thing I remembered wasn’t a movie, however. It was an entry in Roger Ebert’s movie glossary:
Balloon Rule: Good movies rarely contain a hot-air balloon.
I began to think of it, and it seems Ebert was right. Oh sure, a couple of exceptions leap to mind. There’s The Wizard of Oz, with the immortal line, “I can’t, I don’t know how it works!” The Great Muppet Caper isn’t one of the great Muppet movies, but it’s entertaining enough, and it had a hot air balloon.
After that, though ,,,,
Um …. Around the World in 80 Days? Uch. Best Picture my foot.
Er ….
The Great Race was a fun comedy, although I would stop well short of calling it a great movie. Much better was the comedy Rat Race, the last good movie from part of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team of Airplane! fame.
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is one of Terry Gilliam’s delightfully loopy visions, though I can’t say I remember it for any balloon scenes.
Octopussy: One of the better Roger Moore Bonds, though the site of Q in one of the balloons is awfully silly.
Superman II showed us how to escape from prison using a hot air balloon.
There are some decent choices here, but I still need to broaden the palette. A Google search of “Hot air balloon movies” turns up a bunch of videos, but no feature films, at least on the first page.
Changing the search to hot air balloon films gets us a clip of a silent film with Buster Keaton, The Balloonatic. Clever, and an interesting find.
Still, we’re not getting very many movies where balloons play a major part of any scene.
Ah, but if we expand our criteria to floating aircraft and not just balloons, then it gets a little more interesting:
Black Sunday: The Goodyear Blimp + the Super Bowl = cheesy fun.
The Hindenburg: Robert Wise directed George C. Scott, and Anne Bancroft in this 1975 film about the doomed zeppelin.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Two words: No ticket.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: Granted, the Hindenburg only shows up in a few scenes, but I’ll take any chance I can to promote this sorely underrated film.
Well, let’s face it. I’ve ridden in a hot air balloon, and no movie, no matter how good, can successfully capture their grandeur. You simply have to see them in person. So come on down to the Challenge this weekend and check them out. Here’s our site with all the details about the event.
But first, have I overlooked any movies that represent balloons/blimps/zeppelins well? Comment and let me know!
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