Overall Rating
  Awesome: 28.3%
Worth A Look: 25.79%
Just Average: 10.69%
Pretty Crappy: 14.47%
Sucks: 20.75%
14 reviews, 75 user ratings
|
|
| Snakes on a Plane |
by Dawn Taylor
"Okay, so there are these snakes. On a plane."
|
Just in case it slipped under your radar, there's this little movie quietly tip-toeing into theaters called Snakes on a Plane. It's's understandable if you haven't heard about it there's hardly been any promotional push. There's been a little bit of buzz about it on the Internet but that's about it.Anyway. Sarcasm aside, Snakes on a Plane is terrific. With the grotesque amount of netgeek obsession and media exposure devoted to this thing, odds were very, very good that it couldn't live up to the hype. And yet, it turns out to be everything that it promises, dialed up to 11. There are motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!
In the ridiculously efficient set-up, we meet a motorbike-driving kid (Nathan Phillips) who gulps down a Red Bull marking one of the quickest studio-logo-to-product-placement moments in recent memory and then witnesses a nasty murder committed by an infamous mobster named Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson). In the blink of an eye, he's whisked into custody by FBI agent Neville Flynn (Samuel "Motherfucking" Jackson) and placed on a plane from Hawaii to L.A., where he'll testify. In order to stop this from happening, Kim's gang loads a metric buttload of poisonous snakes on the plane. And they spray all of the leis that the passengers will be given with pheromones to make the snakes go nuts. Then the plane takes off.
In classic Airport '75 fashion, there's a menu of character types on board like the mother with the baby, the two kids traveling alone, the rich debutante with the purse-dog, the couple returning from their honeymoon, and the blowhard English guy with a snotty attitude. Oh, and a professional kickboxer! All that's missing is a nun with a guitar and a charming little old lady (you know, Helen Hayes is dead, but surely they could have gotten that woman who played the secretary on "The West Wing" if they'd tried). There's also the smarmy pilot (marvelously played by David Koechner, pretty much offering his same character as in Anchorman: The Ron Burgundy Story) and a germ-phobic, Puffy Combs-like rapper (Flex Alexander) and his bodyguards-slash-posse (Kenan Thompson and Keith Dallas).
Naturally, there's also a plucky stewardess (Juliana Margulies) who's on her last flight because she's leaving to go to law school. That's one of those silly throw-away character bits that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot one can only assume that it was chucked in there so that we think, "Wow ... she must be SMART for a flight attendant!" Because, you know, stupid flight attendants are no help at all when there are snakes! On a plane!!!
In most films this is the point where the screenwriters would slooooowly introduce the snakes, picking off the characters one by one. But no! After crawling through the instrument panels and shorting out a few things so the plane is in jeopardy, all of a sudden there are SNAKES! All over the motherfucking plane!
Director David R. Ellis (Cellular, Final Destination 2) has a way with mayhem, and these snakes don't fool around. They also don't, of course, act anything like actual snakes herpetologists will have a field day with this flick and since they're virtually all CGI snakes, they overact worse than Al Pacino doing Shakespeare. They rise up, look straight into the camera, and smile before leaping across long distances to attach themselves to passengers throats, chests, eye sockets and asses. In one case, a man has an unfortunate snake experience while urinating in the plane's bathroom. There is much screaming and hissing and biting and ... oh, it's marvelously stupid. And exciting. And just plain fun.
It's refreshing to see a film patently marketed to a specific audience that was obviously made with a lot of thought and enthusiasm. Ellis & Company knew what we wanted from a movie called Snakes on a Plane and they gleefully deliver it, ignoring all sorts of logic because they know that the audience won't care. How the hell did a snake get into a folded up air sickness bag, for God's sake? If the plan was to release angry, poisonous snakes on the plane, why is there also a fucking enormous BOA CONSTRICTOR in the mix? (So we can see it swallow a guy's entire head, that's why!) Wheeee!
Every over-the-top element is delivered without apology, including the product placements a lone can of Pepsi is wheeled down the aisle on a beverage cart, label squarely facing forward. Pelligrino water is poured, and a Sony Playstation figures prominently in the plot. There's that Red Bull at the top of the film, which makes a second appearance when Flynn tosses the empty can, sealed in an evidence bag, on the table during his interrogation as he demands, "Why do you keep feeding me this garbage?" Which, when you think of it, probably isn't the sort of endorsement the Red Bull people were hoping for.And Jackson ... ahhh, Jackson. He plays the whole thing with such charm and sincerity, he helps to sell the whole ludicrous package. He's an action star to be reckoned with, and there will undoubtedly be sequels. Snakes on a Submarine, no doubt. And Piranhas on a Schoolbus. And they'll be terrible ... but for now, we have Snakes on a Plane, and it rocks.
link directly to this review at https://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=15043&reviewer=413
originally posted: 08/18/06 13:21:29
![[printer]](/images/icon/printer.gif) printer-friendly format
|
 |
USA
18-Aug-2006 (R)
DVD: 02-Jan-2007
UK
18-Aug-2006
Australia
24-Aug-2006
|
|
Articles 
subscribe to this feed![[AllPosters.com]](/images/icon/ap.gif){kind=icon}
