Des serpents dans l'avion

After witnessing gangster Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson) brutally beat U. S. Prosecutor Daniel Hayes (Scott Nicholson) to death in Hawaii, Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips) is escorted by FBI agents Neville Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson) and John Sanders (Mark Houghton) on a Boeing 747-400 to testify at the trial in Los Angeles. So the FBI agent Flynn takes on a plane full of deadly venomous snakes, deliberately released to kill a witness being flown from Honolulu to Los Angeles to testify against a mob boss. At 30,000 feet, snakes aren't the deadliest thing on this plane !. Sit back. Relax. Enjoy the fright. Airline food ain't what you gotta worry about !.

An amusing and entertaining film with an outlandish premise: a large collection of venomous snakes unleashed at will, committing all kinds of misdeeds and mischief against the initially naive passengers of an airplane. Never more than a catchy title in search of a movie, 'Snakes on a plane', was shaped by internet fans and opportunist New Line studio execs into a critic-proof product. It may be too long, poorly written and indifferently shot, but it has the charismatic Samuel L. Jackson enjoying himself, swearing up a storm and making the most of attractive lines. Without Jackson as a FBI agent accompanying a murder witness on a flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles, this would assuredly have slithered into oblivion. Besides the commotion, confusion and carnage caused by the venomous snakes, another pleasure is finding the large number of supporting actors (with uneven film careers) who are victims of the hideous snakes, including the following: Rachel Blanchard, Flex Alexander, Kenan Thompson, Lin Shaye, Bruce James, Sunny Mabrey, Gerard Plunkett, Terry Chen, Emily Holmes, Tygh Runyan, Elsa Pataky, Taylor Kitsch, Kevin McNulty, David Koechner, Bobby Cannavale, Tom Butler, among others

The motion picture was mediocre but professionally directed by deceased filmmaker David R. Ellis. He had a long career as stunts coordinator, assistant director and finally director. David made the promotion to Stunt Coordinator in 1978 on Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). Coordinating TV and films all over the world brought him up to the position of 2nd Unit Director on Gorky Park (1983). "Action" movies proceeded to explode along with David's career. Befriending Harrison Ford, two of David's most notable 2nd units were Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994). As shown in Filmography, he worked back-to-back until the break from Disney, offering to 1st unit Direct the feature, "Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco" (1996), directorial debut grossed over $100 Million. Completed two features for 1997, Desperate Measures (1998) & Sphere (1998) with Barry Levinson. Directing Box office success such as ¨Cellular¨, ¨Asylum¨, ¨Shark Night¨, ¨Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco¨, ¨Final Destination¨, ¨Final destination 2¨ and ¨Snakes on plane¨. Rating: 5/10. Average but passable. The movie will appeal to Samuel L. Jacson fans.

From the director who bought you the worst Final Destination movie, Snakes on a Plane is an exploitation flick that knows exactly what it wants to do and gets the job done expertly. It's not perfect and doesn't have to be, coupled with Samuel L. Jackson in tow; Jackson makes this movie far more than the disposable B-movie it was initially conceived as. He bestrides Snakes on a Plane with the authority of someone who knows the value of what he's appearing in with that signature fierce glimmer in his eye. Ridiculous in every sense of the word, Snakes on a Plane is nothing if not a riot with a few friends or after having down a couple of beers, yes it's stupid and yes it can be pretty sleep-inducing, but who honestly cares when it more than lives up to its title.

I'm confident that "Snakes on a Plane" will prove once and for all that Internet culture and mainstream culture are not one and the same.

Because, my friends, the Internet will tell you that SOAP (as those in the know call it) is a classic film - the best "bad movie" ever made. But I think any more sensible member of the general public will tell you that SOAP is nothing more than a mildly competent action movie. It's not hysterically funny. It's not scary. It's occasionally exciting. And it sure ain't a "10" on the IMDb scale.

Don't misunderstand me; I had fun watching the movie. I was even willing to be generous, until I saw the outrageously high rating on this site and all the strangely gushing reviews. Frankly, I'm a bit astonished. Why heap such praise on this particular film? If you love camp, over-the-top action movies, then why not worship a camp action film that's actually good? ("Wrath of Khan" springs to mind - also "Batman.")

The truth is that parts of SOAP are pretty lame. Samuel L. Jackson is good, but his role is weirdly small. And, aside from his one power catchphrase, most of his dialog is banal and dull. The rest of the actors aren't even worth commenting on, since they're stuck with stock and boring "funny" characters.

Speaking of dull, how many different ways can snakes really kill someone? They hiss...they lunge...they bite...over and over and over again. It's not particularly cinematic. And most of them are fake CGI anyway, so they're not even remotely frightening.

Face it, the only reason to see this is because it's camp and bad. It's part of the whole culture of worshiping lame junk that's prevalent right now. It's hip to like terrible garage bands and lame movies because people are either too impatient, or too unsophisticated, to take the time to absorb entertainment that's actually artistic. So we watch and listen to junk, and imagine that we're superior to it, and that makes us feel good. Apparently.

Is there anything wrong with liking junk? Not really - I review and praise junk on this site all the time. But putting junk on a pedestal? That's very, very wrong.

Sermon over.

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.

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!