Des serpents dans l'avion

Samuel L. holds it together, but this film just isn't bad enough for the type of film it's been billed as. With all the promotional hype, I really expected something more. Where is the trenchant dialogue of a REALLY bad film? Sigh. It made me long for campy Killer Tomatoes, night clubbing Mushroom People, and the warm comfort of bad dialogue a la Buckaroo Banzai. I'm sure that the cast tried mightily, but in the end, it's just a semi-bad film, which is, of course, the kiss of death. Destined to be a lukewarm cult film for teens, about the best we can say is that Samuel L. is The Man for insisting that the film keep it's original working title of "Snakes on a Plane". One thing of note to parents- children may have been lured to the film because of all the promotional efforts and the film was originally rated PG-13. Additional footage took it to R and it contains scenes that are too strong for most pre-teen and younger teen children.

I'm calling this an "experience" rather than a "review", because a review wouldn't really encapsulate how enjoyable this movie is. If I was forced to review the movie, I'd talk about how slow it is in the beginning, how although some of the dialog is witty quite a lot of it is hackneyed (a scene with SLJ telling JM to "Be strong" was especially cringe-worthy), and the climax didn't have a lot of tension and was a bit disappointing. Five stars out of ten sounds about right, and is perhaps a bit generous.

But I came out of the movie with a smile on my face, because it was fun. The audience was really, really into it. When the title of the movie appeared, everyone cheered (I haven't seen that happen in a movie theater since Episode 1). Every over-the-top "death by snake" was cheered and applauded. The people who were going to die were fairly easily identified, and people eagerly awaited their death scenes. (In a nod to the movie writers, I expected one character to die for being a complete jerk, and they surprised me by having that character survive.) And, as could be expected, when SLJ delivers his much-discussed line towards the end of the film, the audience cheered throughout its entire delivery. I laughed; it was just fun to listen to the audience.

This is not a movie you download via BitTorrent. This is not a movie you watch on cable, or rent via DVD. This is a movie you watch in a crowded movie theater. Because only then will it be fun; only then will the energy of the movie and the audience make the experience worthwhile.

Anyone who's seen this movie and given it a 10 may feel good about themselves for promoting what obviously started as an underground film, but an honest look will show you that this movie is grossly overrated. Before I get labeled as someone who "just doesn't get it" concerning this movie, I'd like to explain what I expected: a movie with everything over-the-top: Violence, cursing, and (most importantly) Samuel L. Jackson. What I got was glimpses of the movie I expected interspersed with, unfortunately, what looked like real attempts at plot and character development. Especially painful was watching the rap star's transformation from good guy to bad and back to good again. Pointless, it added nothing to the film. What hurt the most, though, was a lack of Mr. Jackson. He was in the movie, but other than the one expected line towards the end of the film, there really wasn't anything else that was quotable in there. I thought he'd be cursing and killing snakes left and right, but by the time he finally said his "mother *beep* snakes" line, the audience's cheering where I watched it was half-hearted as though to say "well, that was good, but where were all the other parts I came here to cheer for?" Most of the "extreme" scenes felt forced (just think about the line from the guy who pees on the snake), while all it would have taken to make this movie awesome was to not hold back or strive for "acting" or "plot". I gave the movie a 5 because, come on, Sam Jackson is the man and, admittedly, there were some pretty damn funny parts... but I really wanted to rate this higher. The idea was great, but I didn't feel it came close to the hype. Instead, I left feeling like I'd just watched all the deleted scenes of a great movie that just didn't measure up to the finished product.

The best review of the film portion of this movie is from the Onion AV Club. It sums up Sam Jackson's performance as "done on his lunchbreak while filming a lesser degrading film". And yet, he's the best dang part of the whole thing. What this movie needed was more of him vs. the Snakes which never reaches the insanity of a "Dead Alive" and instead fizzles out in one of the lamer endings in recent cinemadom. You get snakes, on a plane. And some great B- horror moments that'll make you laugh, but this is not a cult classic. Despite people's want for a cult classic here, it's far too normal for that. Instead check out the aforementioned "Dead alive" (aka Brain Dead) or Tsui Hark's hilariously straight "Knock Off" with Van Damm & Rob Schneider. THOSE were bad good flicks this is one is just ho-hum.

On the other hand, the audience is hot for Snakes. As stephanie from salon.com says, if you're going to see Snakes, do so now with the packed evening screenings. People throwing rubber snakes, reciting sam's line and making hissing noises throughout makes for theme park ride levels of fun.

I was quite looking forward to this film as I enjoyed David R. Ellis' previous film Cellular and the poster and idea for Snakes on a Plane is just pure high-concept trash. I could have been great, but I was surprisingly bored through-out. I do like popcorn movies, but the popcorn has to taste good and this bucket just has far too much venom in it for me.

After Final Destination 2 and Cellular, David R. Ellis seems to be New Line Cinema's king of B-movies. Since the departure of Ronny Yu from this project, he seemed like the most logical choice. And while he does use some innovative ideas (such as the pretty cool 'snake vision') the film is too darkly shot and edited like a blur. I don't find death to be funny and expected a stronger 'man vs nature' subtext to it. What we get is a man being bitten on the penis and stoners bitten while joining the Mile High Club. And the sudden, stinging attacks never seem to frighten. The first few kills are crass and exploitative and it spoils the mood for the rest of the film.

I know I am being ridiculous criticising a no-brainer film such as this in such a way but even low-grade B-movies like Anaconda and it's sequel managed to be more scary and exciting than this. The characters are set-up in the typical horror film way and it's obvious which ones are going to die one by one. And while their deaths appear to violent, you never REALLY see anything shocking. A film with such an eccentric title really should have gone to crazy, far-fetched extremities and delivered loads of gore. But it never truly seems like it does. The majority of the film seems taped together from various different writers ideas and some scenes definitely feel tacked on after principal photography.

Films set on panic-stricken planes are abundant (Exec Dec, Passenger 57, United 93, Con Air, Die Hard 2) and scenes of crash landings and decompression are nothing new to audiences. The presence of Snakes doesn't make it much different.

Plus, Trevor Rabin's score is total crap. Plain and simple. Uninspired, generic rubbish completely without theme, melody, excitement our even coherence in it's endless bombasticness. I had great hopes for him when he did such brilliant work (actually co-composing) on Con Air and Armageddon, but he's fast proving to be talentless.

Samuel L. Jackson is brilliant as always and the under-rated Julianna Margulies is quite bloody gorgeous, more so than more popular Hollywood actresses. Lin Shaye (a popular New Line actress, since her husband runs the studio) has more to do than usual in the role of a heroic stewardess and those of you who like her more comedic roles will find this a welcome change. Though there's not much else I can recommend.

After all the internet-nerd hype surrounding this film, it fails to live up to potential and expectations. Quite a disappointment!