'Snakes' so bad it's good
The only innovation of "Snakes on a Plane" is in the title.
All the airline disaster cliches it presents have been done and been brilliantly lampooned in "Airplane" (1980). Same goes for the cop drama. They are the same old archetypes we've been seeing for years.
No, if it wasn't for the snakes on the plane, most of us — including Samuel L. Jackson — wouldn't have given a rip about this movie. But we have the snakes and to director David R. Ellis' credit, he has seized the opportunity afforded him by the title, Mr. Jackson and a legion of loyal-beyond-reason Internet bloggers to put together a ripping little thrill ride to end the summer. If you're looking for anything else from a movie called "Snakes on a Plane" save your money.
"What were you expecting?" one guy asked his friend in the restroom after Thursday night's screening. "Character development? A plot?"
Well, there is a bit of a plot.
Surfer dude Sean (Nathan Phillips) accidentally spies gangster Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson) carrying out a brutal murder of a Los Angeles prosecutor in Hawaii.
Police and Kim both find Sean, and he is eventually put on a plane to Los Angeles to testify against Kim. Escorting him is the coolest FBI agent in the land, played — of course — by Jackson.
Kim concocts a plot to release a load of exotic, deadly snakes onto the plane and utilize a pheromone to make them highly aggressive.
If you're already seeing plot holes in this, trust us, there are loads. Even a character observes that releasing snakes on the plane would be no guarantee Sean would die. That character, by the way, gets it.
This may be one of the most self-aware movies in quite a while. It knew it needed to get to the action quick. It knew it needed to be graphic, but not too graphic. It knew that a cheesy line would probably get as many laughs as groans. It knew that bad was sort of its standard. "Snakes" actually seizes opportunities to appeal to the lowest common denominator, like some of the body parts the snakes attack.
Nobody's trying to win an Oscar here.
And while that may bug some filmgoers, they probably weren't going to go to a movie called "Snakes on a Plane" anyway. There are moments it's so bad it's good. It's mugging to the camera, saying "C'mon, let's have some fun."
If you weren't expecting much from "Snakes on a Plane," that's about what you get. But in a perverse way, you get more.
<B>TITLE:</B> "Snakes on a Plane"<B>DIRECTOR:</B> David R. Ellis<B>CAST:</B> Samuel L. Jackson, Nathan Phillips, Rachel Blanchard and Julianna Margulies<B>RATING:</B> R for language, sexuality, drug use, and intense sequences of terror and violence.<B>GRADE:</B> 3 Stars (out of five)
