Snakes on a Plane (Theatrical Film Review)

 

Stars: Samuel L. Jackson, Julianna Margulies, Nathan Phillips, Rachel Blanchard

Director: David R. Ellis

Critic's rating: 4 out of 10

 

Review by Chuck O'Leary

 

Maybe it's just because of its blatant B-movie title, but Snakes on a Plane has generated enormous buzz on the Internet for months prior to its release -- somehow I doubt the film's original title, Pacific Air 121, would have spawned such hype.

 

Don't ask me how or why this happens.  A similar thing happened with The Blair Witch Project seven summers ago, and the pre-release hype alone was enough to give what turned out to be an amateurish low-budget stinker big box-office returns.

 

There's something too manufactured (reminiscent of a political campaign) about the pre-release buzz associated with Blair Witch and Snakes.  I much preferred how horror sleepers were made years ago, epitomized by the first Halloween.  It was only after audiences and critics got a look at the film and ecstatic word-of-mouth started to circulate that Halloween became a surprise hit.  But that was back in 1978, near the end of an era where a film could still gradually find an audience, and benefit from a re-release or two.  Now in the age of 3,000-plus screen wide releases, and faster-than-ever DVD releases (Snakes already has a December 5, 2006 DVD release date), a big-studio movie is usually only as successful as its opening weekend, making pre-release buzz a must.

 

Getting them into the theater is all that matters anymore.  Whether or not a movie is good now seems secondary or downright extraneous.  The Hollywood hype machine is so well oiled and audience expectations have become so lowered that we've now entered an age of pre-ordained hits.

 

Snakes on a Plane is movie being sold strictly on its title.  Yes, poisonous snakes attacking people aboard a commercial airliner is an original concept, combining the fear of flying and the fear of deadly reptiles, but the film always seems too aware of its own stupidity, and therefore, it doesn't take itself seriously enough.  Cheesy B movies tend to be more fun when they aren't so keenly aware of their cheesy B-movie status.

 

Samuel L. Jackson stars as Neville Flynn, an FBI agent taking a star witness on a red-eye flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles.  The star witness, Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips), has information guaranteed to put away a vicious crime boss.  The crime boss, however, comes up with a diabolical plan to kill the witness, even if it means killing everyone aboard a commercial flight: He'll secretly put hundreds of various poisonous snakes in the plane's cargo, and release them mid-flight over the Pacific Ocean.  And if that's not enough, he'll put some sort of pheromones in the plane's ventilation system to make the already deadly snakes extra aggressive. 

 

Like the worst slasher films, it's a foregone conclusion in Snakes on a Plane which characters will live and which ones will die.  The film introduces a lot of token idiots who'll inevitably get killed off, and saves the most horrible death for the most obnoxious passenger so the audience won't feel guilty about momentarily rooting for a snake.

 

It's hard to take a movie seriously when the first victims are a topless buxom woman and her shirtless hunky boyfriend being bitten by a snake while trying to join the Mile High Club inside the lavatory.  I haven't taken many flights lately, but somehow I have the feeling joining the Mile High Club would be a lot more difficult after 9/11.  To its detriment, Snakes never acknowledges flight marshals or any of the security measures added since 9/11.  Another early victim gets killed when a poisonous snake slithers out of the lavatory toilet and bites him on the penis while he's urinating.  But these moments are nothing compared to what transpires in intelligence insulting final reel.

 

From Airport to Executive Decision to Red Eye, Snakes is hardly the most suspenseful potboiler set aboard an aircraft, and from Sssssss to Venom (1982) to both Anaconda movies, it's hardly the most effective potboiler involving deadly serpents.  It's a thriller that would have been better off spending more time with the snakes and less time with its dopey characters.

 

Snakes on a Plane may very well become the biggest hit in recent years not shown to critics before opening day.  It's a bad, dumb movie, but isn't any worse than most of the other bad, dumb movies Hollywood produces by the boatload these days.