Snakes On A Plane does not pretend to be a great movie. It does not put on airs, or give itself license to imagine it is great. It is trailer house trash designed to appeal to the puerile, adolescent mind whose only requirement is vapid entertainment of the sort normally seen in Wile E. Coyote cartoons. This is SOAP‘s intention from the beginning frame, and though its infantile title and premise is indeed the sole hook upon which its marketing strategy hung, it is honest enough to deliver what it promises.
There’s a plane. There’s a bunch of snakes. And it’s about time they made a movie about it.
Samuel L. Jackson plays Neville Flynn, a no-nonsense FBI-type guy who must transport the mild-mannered Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips) as a protected witness from Hawaii to Los Angeles to testify against vicious gangster Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson). Kim’s solution to off the witness? No, it’s not releasing a deadly aerosol toxin inside the plane once it’s airborne. It’s not even getting a sniper to take Jones out once he reaches Los Angeles. No, Eddie Kim isn’t just a gangster–he’s an entrepreneur. It’s why he became successful. He’s creative. And he’s not dissuaded by 24-hour FBI surveillance.
His creative solution is to release pheromone-enraged poisonous snakes on the plane mid-flight. Kim suggests he’s “exhausted all other options.” Well, my guess is he has quite a few other options at his disposal, if he really wanted. But it’s to our benefit that he feels differently.
Naturally, the plane is quickly turned into a metal cylinder of deadliness, with hapless passengers becoming snake food in various unpleasant ways, including several crotch-biting sequences that seems part of a revival in movie schlock-horror genital mutilation. Fun times for the whole family. Thankfully, Flynn is no stranger to danger. He spends the rest of the film adapting to the snakes and their murderous intentions, eventually culminating in the famous line adapted from the internet parody trailer, “I am sick and tired of these motherf***ing snakes on this motherf***ing plane!”
The film’s hype comes straight from the internet, and it’s likely that many of its promoters won’t actually end up seeing the film, due to the fact they’re too busy messaging people on MySpace and playing video games to actually get out of their parents’ basement to hit up the theatre for some good B-movie fun, which actually explains the weekend’s poor box office returns. However, the film itself delivers on its only promise, and delivers with the cheesy joy of a 1950′s giant insect movie. There’s no redeeming factor here. There’s no moral. There’s no metaphor. It’s simply a bad movie made for people to enjoy without feeling guilty about later on.
I’ll tell you straight out: if you go to this movie expecting anything resembling a well-conceived plot, you are a fool. If you’re going to see great acting, spectacular effects, or dramatic catharsis in a momentous triumph of some character over great adversity and personal struggle, you’re angling for shallow water. If you care to see snakes on a motherf***ing plane, then you just might have a good time.
Fringe Rating: out of 5