Des serpents dans l'avion

Campy / B movies have to do something right to make the leap from a trashy one-time-watch to a cult classic. Snakes on a Plane delivers -- it's actually pretty good.

If you're willing to watch it through a certain lens; with the knowledge that you're watching a truly satirical movie, it's very entertaining. Samuel L Jackson's charismatic performance is what makes this movie great.

The marketing behind this movie is truly unique in that it is exactly what it says it is and almost nothing else! Silly but fun watch!

"Snakes on a Plane" is a movie that practically reviews itself. The concept is the pitch, and the pitch is the movie. Snakes, a plane, and Samuel L. Jackson. Simple as that. The problem? The execution doesnt live up to the hype.

The film is far too restrained. It doesnt lean into its campy premise enough to be hilarious, nor does it crank up the tension to become a proper thriller. The movie sticks to a pretty safe formula. Predictable kills, mediocre effects, and a thunderstorm because of course theres a thunderstorm.

"Snakes on a Plane" is definitely best enjoyed in a packed theater, watching it solo on the couch? Not the same vibe.

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!

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'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.