Wonderful character development!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

San Francisco International (SFI for the rest of this) follows what I've started calling a Love Boat style of plot development. You know – a movie or television show with an ensemble cast where each character has their own storyline that may or may not have anything to do with the other characters. One plot line is deadly serious, another is romantically charged, the next is played for laughs, and on and on it goes. I don't know where the Love Boat plot style first originated, but SFI follows this to a "T". The story lines in SFI include: a boy, upset over his parents divorce, climbs into an abandoned plane and takes off; a band of crooks robs a shipment of cash going through the airport; seeking additional funding for the airport, airport head honcho Jim Conrad (Pernell Roberts) fakes an emergency landing with a planeload of government officials; a businessman and a hippie get into an altercation; etc. But being a 70s made-for-TV movie, you know everything is going to work out fine in the end – not that you really care or anything.There are several reasons why SFI never made it to our television sets as a regular series. And chief among them as far as I'm concerned is Pernell Roberts. Being self-assured is one thing, but Roberts' character comes off as one of the smuggest in history. He's too unlikable to care about any of his problems and whether they get resolved or not. You can't build a series around a horses rear-end like Jim Conrad and expect anyone to watch.As with a lot of the "bad" movies I've been watching lately, I saw SFI courtesy of Mystery Science Theater 3000. And as far as a MST3K episode goes, SFI is a keeper. A laugh at every turn. If you're a fan of the show, do yourself a favor and seek it out. This one gets a 4/5 on my MST3K rating scale.

OK, so this movie and the subsequent series tanked...but it's brought many evenings of joy to us as cannon fodder for the rapier-like minds at MST3K, who hit this one over the 400- foot sign. It succeeds in a way its makers never intended...Pernell Roberts struts around "his" airport, annoying congressmen and local bureaucrats alike. Clu Gulagher mumbles and mutters his lines while trying to be the sheriff on the spread, though his thunder is stolen by the postal inspector. A Mr. Hunter inserts "Tab A" into this B-movie with a plot to steal either a million bucks or a crate of old magazines, I'm never sure which. Weaving through this plot (sic) is Davey, who stumbles through the action like Billy in the Family Circus. Will he find the radio? Will the plane land safely? Will we even remotely care? And who gets to ask David Hartman, "Why the long face?"Previous reviewers have been much too harsh -- this one should be viewed as a monument to all the things the 1970s brought us -- B movies, no Homeland Security checkpoints, planes with aisles as wide as city streets, three-martini lunches, and made-for-TV hippies...Having expectations just means disappointment in the end. Let it wash over you and laugh!

Frankly I'm surprised after watching this thing that we've made it this far. This movie is the worst of the worst, right down there with Manos, Boggy Creek, and Laserblast. It is absolute crap, from beginning to end. Some retarded kid steals an airplane, and of course his parents are getting divorced. There's some plane with 3 million dollars and some idiots have some really cheesed up plan to steal it.I will never understand for the rest of my life how the heck this ever was green lighted to put on celluloid. From beginning to end, this movie will absolutely disappoint. Only watchable as MST, and they have a lot of fun with it. EEERRRKKEEELLLLL! 1/10

If there's anything on TV that could make "Cop Rock" look like "Masterpiece Theatre", San Francisco International is it. Pernell Roberts, long before he discovered his TV niche as Trapper John, stars here as an arrogant, self-aggrandizing, pompous head of security for the San Francisco airport. >In order for you to get an idea of his modus operandi as head of security, he stages a crisis aboard an airplane full of congressmen in order to demonstrate his need for more security. Thankfully, the scene of these VIPs cleaning up after discovering the hoax was left on the editing room floor. > David Hartman also stars as a clueless pilot whose wife is kidnapped. The kidnapping takes place so that Hartman's character can stall his next flight long enough so that the bad guys can steal some gold, money, potatoes...who really cares?This movie throws in every bad TV movie element of the time, missing only the opportunity to cast either Bert Convy or one of the Landers sisters. Roberts' character is neither likable nor identifiable in this film.Sterno says keep this film on your personal radar, only to make sure that you've shot it down and to watch it go down in flames.