The VCH Reviews SNAKES ON A PLANE

 

  The following entry may contain *SPOILERS*

 *sigh of relief*  I am happy to report that Snakes on a Plane delivers.  As they like to say on Big Brother this season, "it is what it is."  SoaP is a fun, critic-proof popcorn movie.  It is a campy, action-horror romp.  I, of course, can't judge it by awards potential or any other mainstream industry standard.  I can only judge it by how much I was smiling while watching it.  And that was a lot.  I haven't smiled that much in a theater since Freddy fought Jason.

   Samuel L. Jackson plays Flynn, a typical Jackson bad-ass role.  He is a federal agent escorting a witness for the prosecution to LA to testify against an Asian mob boss.  The kid has witnessed a murder and is a target, but how he was found by both the mob and Jackson, what police corruption has to do with anything, and how the bad guys knew which plane was not the decoy is all inconsequential in a film called Snakes on a Plane.  The whys and hows are tossed within the first 10 minutes and soon enough we're at the airport meeting all the characters who may or may not become snake food.

  They include a germophobic rap star and his posse, an annoying business woman and her dog, Mary-Kate.  Of course, the movie delivers on the all-important cliches as well.  You've got the guy who is afraid to fly, the obnoxious man who hates everyone around him, and not one, but two flight attendants who are about to retire.  And, as is customary, the people who have sex are the first to be dispatched.

  Things escalate quickly from humorous to exciting to utterly preposterous, but none of it is ever boring or bad.  I can't recommend it or not recommend it because it's the type of movie where you either like it or you don't and you know which it is before you would ever need to hear someone else's opinion.  I can only say that I absolutely loved it.  Snakes on a Plane gets an A+ 

 

*The only thing I was disappointed with was the obvious edit to include the now world-famous Jackson line heard at the beginning of this song.  I thought it would come after he kills one or when the snakes really screw something up in the plane's instruments.  Instead, he says it right before they put the landing plan into action.  That would work just fine except that his anger didn't really fit the mood of the scene.  I guess I was just expecting too much from that line.  LOL

Also, it would have been a cool nod to Deep Blue Sea if Flynn had died in the middle of his "Let's keep it together" speech, but, funny as that would have been, you can't have the second half of the movie Jackson-free if you don't have Tom Jane to take you home.