A boy and his mother take a multi-legged airline flight from New York to Los Angeles. The film visuals are nostalgically fun, but the movie is not. The dialogue is flat, the story flightless. The empty space left behind is filled with lots of drinking and smoking, some winks at marital affairs and a handful of OMGs.
Back in 1962, young Jeff kept a stack of airline flight schedules hidden under his mattress. That’s how enamored he was with the idea of someday taking a plane flight. He knew the kinds of craft each airline used, and exactly how long each leg of every flight would take.
So when his 49-year-old single mom—who would quickly note that she still had a very good figure for her age—told him that they were going to Los Angeles via a TWA prop plane, Jeff was ecstatic. Sure, the trip was all because one of Mom’s “friends” had assured her that he could get her into a film if she ever made her way to the West Coast. And even to Jeff that felt like a stretch. But hey, they were taking a flight on an actual airline!
Mom could only afford the late-night flight: Most of the other flyers were bleary-eyed or hungover at that hour. But to Jeff, this was the most exciting and exotic experience of his 8-year-old life.
He sat near the window so he could see two of the four Wright Cyclone radial piston engines fire up (flames actually flaring out behind them) and smiled ear-to-ear. This was going to be the best 11 hours (when adding in plane changes and layovers) ever!
Jeff’s mom may only be interested in smoking her next cigarette, drinking her next Manhattan and slyly flirting with some random (and probably married) guy. But Jeff had his finger on the pulse of adventure.
Look at those stars in the wintery sky, Jeff thought. Paradise.
Mom may be a little too self-focused, a bit morally loose and fairly delusional about her chances in Hollywood, but she loves her son. And she happily joins in his excitement for the trip. The flight attendants around Jeff and Mom during their travels are all kind and caring. And two of those attendants befriend the pair and go out of their way to make their flights as enjoyable as possible.
One of the flight attendants that Jeff and his mom meet is a woman who was in a German concentration camp as a child. It’s implied that she is Jewish.
Mom flirts with several men during the trip to L.A. One of them, Harry, admits to Jeff that he is married and has children. But that doesn’t stop Mom from snuggling with him. And when one leg of the flight is cancelled because of wintery weather, Mom lies to her son about “getting a nightcap in the lounge” and spends the time with Harry. Their affair is off screen, but Jeff catches sight of his mom giggling her way out of Harry’s room at 3 a.m.
It’s implied that Jeff’s mother is rather fast and loose with her relationships with a variety of men, and Jeff takes his mom’s promiscuous behavior in stride. We never see or hear about Jeff’s dad. Jeff walks in on three pilots talking about having sex with the same attractive woman at the same time.
Jeff develops an obvious crush on a 21-year-old flight attendant. She kisses him on the cheek. In narration, an adult Jeff says he married that flight attendant years later.
Mom talks to a woman who tells a story about her husband’s heart attack. A passenger reads a newspaper with a headline about a plane crash that killed scores of people.
There is one use of the word “smarta–” in the dialogue along with six misuses of God’s name and one use of “geez.”
On the various legs of Jeff and Mom’s flight, Mom is constantly drinking glasses of wine and mixed drinks and smoking her cigarettes (as do many other passengers). In fact, Jeff watches his mother light up a cigarette and romanticizes the smoke swirling out of her lips, comparing it to something “festive.” A male passenger gets rather drunk because of his nervousness about flying.
On one leg of the flight, a man stands up and begins acting erratically. The narrator then tells us that the man had been drugged and brought on the plane while being transferred to a mental facility.
Jeff’s mom lies to people several times, usually to help give them an improved opinion of her social standing or importance. Jeff takes to lying in the same way, telling people that his mother is going to be in a movie with Paul Newman. Jeff also makes mention of his mother’s prejudicial distaste for foreigners and “people with accents.”
Propeller One-Way Night Coach, based on actor/director John Travolta’s 1997 kids’ book, is supposed to be a nostalgic and charming journey into the past. The film certainly features vibrant color palettes, vintage TWA planes and all the right 1960’s late-night-flight visuals. But everything else here—the acting, the dialogue, the story—just kinda sputters and spits like an untuned prop engine.
Granted, Propeller’s content concerns are limited to childish lies, winking inuendoes about extramarital affairs, lots of drinking and smoking and a handful of OMGs. But that doesn’t exactly make this pic family friendly. Nor does it make it family entertainment.
Perhaps, in the children’s book, Travolta’s love for yesteryear and aviation shone through like a night flight in a panoply of sparkling stars. But the film version simply feels like a 60-minute airport wait for an entertaining flight that never shows up.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
