The earlier (and funnier IMHO) Gumball Rally is still very funny.
Blazing Saddles makes me laugh every time I watch it. But Airplane … hilarious the first couple times, but, leave it alone for some years and come back to it … just not that funny.
The best laugh I got from Airplane, though, came from an entirely different movie. It was one of the Scary Movie movies … #3? I can’t remember. Leslie Nielson was playing the POTUS. The two main characters, a man and a woman, were in a high-pressure situation, trying to defuse an alien bomb, and Nielson stuck his head in and said, “I just want you to know that we’re all counting on you.”
I was probably the oldest person in the theater, and I was the only person who laughed at that line. And … I actually enjoyed being the only person laughing, because I was the only person in the fucking theater who got the joke. Fucking kids.
Austin Power was always clichéd. The reason that some humour is clichéd is that it works. It works so well that it gets used heavily, commonly, by everybody. The weakness of cliché is that it gets worn out.
Austin Power didn’t become cliché. It was constructed from cliché. It worked. You’ve grown up.
Do you understand that you and me are the only people who care and have commented on this particular item. Do you understand that you saying “this thread has taken an utterly absurd turn” makes less sense than your obtuseness about the difference between characters and their importance in movies and audience reactions them?
I had the same experience with “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!” in Blazing Saddles. The saddest part was, this happened in 1974 or '75, and none of my friends got the joke either! I felt like an old fart by the time I was 20! 
No. I understand that you are the only one who cares. It’s what prompted my comments on the ridiculousness of your hijack.
For what it’s worth, I think Labrador Deceiver is clearly and obviously correct. The original statement was that drunk driving couldn’t be played for laughs in a modern movie; people would picket. Backing off that claim to say that a main character and ONLY a main character couldn’t be a drunk driver played for laughs is pretty much meaningless. Clearly, as demonstrated by the 40 Year Old Virgin, drunk driving can still be played for laughs.
Labrador is absolutely correct that the people who would picket such depictions wouldn’t make a distinction between main characters and side characters. Keep in mind that this hypothetical uptight group of people are likely the same group that currently advocates a “no tolerance” R rating for any movie that has any depictions of smoking cigarettes by anyone.
Doing a quick IMDb search for all movies released in the past 10 years with the keyword “drunk driving” shows Hot Fuzz as the #2 hit.
Here is a scene from Hot Fuzz of a main character drunk driving played for laughs.
If 40 Year Old Virgin and Hot Fuzz are too old (almost 10 years ago), here is a scene from the movie The Campaign with the main character drunk driving, played for laughs, released in 2012.
But in Hot Fuzz the character does have an accident and does get arrested for it. He doesn’t get charged, because the police there are corrupt (even the nice ones), but the drunk driving scene is definitely played as “drunk driving is bad and illegal and will cause accidents.”
Collisions. “Accidents” implies there’s nobody to blame.
I’ll add Chasing Amy to the mix. My wife had never seen it and I recommended it. I’m still apologizing for the 20 minutes we watched it. God it was painful.
But, I beg to differ on Wedding Crashers. Still very funny to me.
The same can be said for 40 Year Old Virgin. She had to have Steve Carrell do the breathalyzer to start her car because drunk driving is bad and illegal and she got in trouble for it.