Snakes on a Plane

[Ampage]

Remake + Jacinda Barrett = shite.

[dolly]

I haven't even heard of this film. What am I missing? I see IMDB has it rated 8.4 though. Pretty impressive.

Guess I've been living in a cave the last month or so.

[Kensterberg]

dollybeadz said:

I haven't even heard of this film. What am I missing? I see IMDB has it rated 8.4 though. Pretty impressive.

Guess I've been living in a cave the last month or so.

Just type "Snakes on a Plane" into google and see what happens ...

[dolly]

Wow. It's a saying too. Never heard that one before.

Sounds good. Just my kinda film actually.

[Kensterberg]

I've said it before, but I'll say it again ... if you like the title, you'll like the movie. It's exactly what it sounds like.

And a ton of fun. Not sure it it's a metric or British tonne of fun (would that be funne?), but it's definitely an American ton of fun.

[kmc]

kenholzman said:

I saw it without many other people in the theater, and still really enjoyed it. Yeah, it would've been even more fun with a full house who were really into it, but you take what you can fit in, right?

Has anyone seen Poseidon? I'd skipped it in the theaters, but I'm thinking it might be a fun rental.

Poseidon is the fucking worst. It's true.

SOAP, as I said somewhere else, was the best movie watching experience ever. My theater was packed, and people were going nuts.

[Galactus]

Poseidon is almost craptastic though. It's so over the top and ridiculous, it's a passable action adventure flick. The Poseidon Adventure however is just a good movie. See it.

[phil]

"Snakes on a Plane"

The most anticipated movie of the summer is finally here.
Does it live up to its name?

Editor's note: This review may contain spoilers.

By Stephanie Zacharek


Aug. 18, 2006 | Snakes jabbing through eye sockets. Snakes wriggling underneath muumuus. Snakes biting boobs and penises. You'll see all of this and more in the most anticipated movie of the summer, "Snakes on a Plane," and whether the picture is truly entertaining is beside the point: It seems that nearly everyone who still goes to the movies (as opposed to those who just wait for things to show up on DVD) feels he or she has an ownership stake in "Snakes on a Plane." For months now, moviegoers have been tickled by both the absurdity of the title and its blunt descriptiveness, and we've had a ball trying to imagine what a movie called "Snakes on a Plane" might be like. Who needs marketing when the title of a movie alone is a parlor game of the imagination?

The expectation, I think, was that "Snakes on a Plane" would be a good bad movie, a picture that would free us from having to worry about quality and allow us to concentrate solely on dumb thrills and laughs. But it takes a degree of skill to make a good bad movie. And "Snakes on a Plane" never even allows itself to be truly dumb. The picture feels like a stunt, an exercise; it's winking and knowing every minute. This is a self-parody of a concept that's essentially beyond parody, a joke we're all in on to the point where it really doesn't matter whether we've seen the movie at all.

I saw one of the first showings of "Snakes on a Plane" on Thursday evening in a multiplex in Times Square (it wasn't screened for critics), and the only thing I truly loved about it was the excitement of the audience beforehand. We booed during a preview for some dumb-looking Denzel Washington thing; we cheered for the trailer of Craig Brewer's truly weird-looking "Black Snake Moan" (which, like "Snakes," stars Samuel L. Jackson). When we became restless after too many trailers, a soft hissing noise filled the theater, a boo that was actually a cheer. Time to bring on the motherfucking snakes! I'd urge anyone who's even remotely interested in "Snakes on a Plane" to see it this weekend, when the curiosity level will be at its highest, and with the biggest, rowdiest audience you can find. Because while "Snakes on a Plane" barely stands up as a movie, it definitely qualifies as an event. A fellow critic present at the same showing said that afterward, he couldn't quite tell if the crowd actually liked the picture. But everyone sure liked being there.

So what actually happens in a movie called "Snakes on a Plane"? Samuel L. Jackson plays an FBI agent escorting a surfer guy (Nathan Phillips) on a flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles, where the kid is going to testify against a gang leader (Byron Lawson) who's been doing bad stuff. Unbeknownst to everyone on the plane -- including flight attendant Julianna Margulies and a gaggle of random characters from honeymoon couples to mom-and-baby duos to cute kids traveling alone for the first time -- the baddie has stowed a bunch of poisonous snakes, from all corners of the world, in the hold. When the moment is right, these reptiles will burst from their hiding place (behind stacks of boxes of fragrant leis) and, hepped up on pheromones that have been piped into the air, will attack ruthlessly. Just because.

There are a few great visual moments here, as when the plane's oxygen masks pop out of their panels unexpectedly and dozens of slithery reptiles drop down with them. And there are a few great shots from the point of view of the snakes eyeing their prey through a funky green haze. (William Castle might have called it "Snake-O-Vision.") Mostly, though, nothing in "Snakes on a Plane" is as cleverly shot as it ought to be. The picture doesn't even look conscientiously cheesy: It's simply as if someone decided, somewhere along the way, that with a title like that, the look of the thing just didn't matter.

"With a title like that" is the key phrase here. The director, David R. Ellis, actually knows how to make an enjoyable B-movie: He directed the extremely energy-efficient thriller "Cellular." But with a title like "Snakes on a Plane," you don't really need a script, or a sharp eye, or even a sense of humor -- and so no one seems to have bothered worrying about any of those things. The picture is sometimes funny, in an elbow-jabbing way, and yet it's essentially humorless: There's no wit to the way the snake attacks are presented, and the movie breaks faith with the audience by killing off a cat, a Chihuahua and the sweet honeymoon couple, just for kicks. (At one point, it looks as if the Chihuahua, a spoiled little thing named Mary Kate, is going to be the hero of the day, which is just the sort of goofy touch the movie needs.)

Jackson seems to have a better idea than the filmmakers of what the movie should be: He prowls through it, delivering his most ridiculous lines with such cranked-up seriousness that you can't help laughing at him. And you desperately want to laugh at him -- he embodies the spirit of the movie we wanted to see, as opposed to the one we've gotten. Now that we finally have the chance to find out what "Snakes on a Plane" is really like, the big question is: If we're disappointed, does that reflect badly on us, for having expected so much? Or does the blame lie with the studio, New Line, and the filmmakers, for giving us only what they think we want to see? "Snakes on a Plane" could have been great, good-bad fun. All it had to do was live up to its name.

[phil]

First it was bad food ...

Then Terrorists ...

Now it's snakes ...

[Adam]

Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?

[Mary]

All my friends in SF went on a big outing to see a special midnight showing of Snakes on a Plane on its premiere night; that sounds totally awesome. They said people got totally decked out, and the theater was giving away big inflatable pythons and shit. I would have been there in a second. However, as undeniably awesome as that sounds, I'm not sure it's the kind of movie that I want to see with people I barely know, so I don't know if it's really worth going to see it in Memphis. If it had come out just a few weeks earlier, I'd have been there in a second. I really don't see how you can doubt a movie involving Samuel Jackson, snakes, a plane, and overuse of the word motherfucker.

Cheers,
M

[Kensterberg]

Hey Phil, here's a (IMHO more accurate) review of the film from the NY Times:

‘Snakes on a Plane’: That’s No Seat Belt Around Your Waist

By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: August 19, 2006
Hype meets bite in “Snakes on a Plane,” which arrived in theaters yesterday, borne aloft by a savvy publicity blitzkrieg and the enthusiasm of Internet film geeks who embraced its old-school exploitation title. The film was not screened in advance for critics, which makes sense not only because the entertainment media are always happy to push films sight unseen (even Jon Stewart shilled for it), but also because all anyone really needs to know about this amusingly crude, honestly satisfying artifact is snakes + plane + Samuel L. Jackson.

As it happens, “Snakes on a Plane” isn’t just about rubber reptiles and Mr. Jackson spewing pearls of profanity; it’s also a solid, B-movie-style entertainment crammed with “Boos!” and lightly scented with a whiff of social metaphor. Made on the cheap, the film is a self-conscious throwback to disaster flicks of the 1970’s, like “Airport” and “Earthquake,” in which small groups of people unite against adversity or, in this case, a plane full of poisonous snakes hopped up on pheromones. Or, as Mr. Jackson’s character, a tough-talking-and-walking F.B.I. agent named Neville Flynn, spins the setup rather more memorably, “Great, snakes on crack.”

Since the film has clearly been built around its title, the snakes are on crack and on that plane for the flimsiest of reasons. Zipping through Hawaii’s back roads on a dirt bike, Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips) stumbles on the crime kingpin Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson) wielding a baseball bat in a spotless white suit. After witnessing some crushing blows and an artful splatter of blood, Sean skedaddles, bullets and bad guys hot on his heels. He subsequently lands under the protective watch of the F.B.I., which persuades him to testify against Kim, which is how he and Flynn end up on the red-eye to Los Angeles in the company of several dozen character actors and a mess of slithering, hissing, snapping and squeezing menace.

There are several different ways to die from an encounter with a snake, and this film has them all. Not long after the seatbelt lights turn off, the rubber, computer-generated and (several hundred) live snakes slither into the main cabin, where they proceed to sink fangs into faces, necks, limbs, torsos, one bared and bountiful female breast and the unseen organ of a male passenger who forgets the No. 1 rule of using strange restrooms: check the toilet bowl. Naughty by nature or perhaps more by design, these snakes don’t just dart out of toilets; they also slide up bare legs and under dresses, moving in and out of every imaginable orifice.

The film’s director, David R. Ellis, whose previous credits include “Cellular” and “Final Destination 2,” has a lot of fun killing off his cast. One of the disreputable pleasures of films like this is trying to figure out who’s going to make it out alive — the loving couple, the kids flying solo, the young mother with a cute baby — and, for the most part, Mr. Ellis does a fine job of keeping us guessing, even if there isn’t really much suspense involved. We know that the hissing Siamese, the yapping Chihuahua and the baby-hating snoot probably won’t be around for the final credits; the only question is how and when these and the other easy targets will end up at the wrong end of a cobra, a rattler, a python or a mangrove.

Written by John Heffernan and Sebastian Gutierrez, from a story by Mr. Heffernan and David Dalessandro, “Snakes on a Plane” is an effectively blunt instrument. There are snakes and smoke, giggles and shrieks, slamming edits and lots of goosy, lurch-in-your seat moments. Mostly, of course, there are snakes and Sam. At once hard-working and hardly working, Mr. Jackson turns in one of his customary performances, meaning that he glowers, barks and periodically unleashes a 13-letter epithet the way only he can. The film’s producers originally conceived “Snakes on a Plane” as a PG-13 release, but encouraged by the enthusiasm of an Internet fan base, added enough gore, expletives and bosoms to ease the rating a notch higher. It earns its R easily.

What the film earns somewhat more slyly is a firm slot in the cultural landscape, not least because of its scarily timely setting. This is, after all, “Snakes on a Plane,” not “Snakes on a Greyhound Bus.” But unlike “Flightplan” and “Red Eye,” two other recent airborne thrillers, “Snakes on a Plane” is less about surviving on airplanes than wresting control of them. In other words, it’s “United 93” without the tears. The filmmakers don’t overplay the political angle, though they do squeeze in a Middle Eastern snake and a scene of an F.B.I. agent sneering about the A.C.L.U. Mostly, though, what they give us is the chance to win, not with righteous morality, but with an old-fashioned swagger that says, much like the film itself, Hey, we may be stupid, but we rock.

“Snakes on a Plane” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Lots of death and dirty words.

************************

Even that review shortchanges the appeal of the film, IMO. This really is the one "must-see" flick of the summer season, the closest thing to a Spider-Man or Star Wars film in 2006, where if you haven't seen it you are really missing part of the current cultural zeitgeist. And the fact that the whole thing can be summed up with the phrase "motherfuckin' snakes on a motherfuckin' plane" is just, well, almost too cool for words.

Somehow, I've gone from skeptic to total fan of this film in a bit over a week. And mainly that's b/c the film just delivers what it promises. Mary, you really should go see this, with or without a group of similarly minded people. Snakes on a plane, it's a film whose time has come. It would be a shame to miss out on it.

[shin]

You really HAVE to see it this weekend ASAP. Either that or wait until your friendly neighborhood arthouse theater starts doing Saturday midnight showings a la Rocky Horror Picture Show.

[Mary]

shin said:

You really HAVE to see it this weekend ASAP. Either that or wait until your friendly neighborhood arthouse theater starts doing Saturday midnight showings a la Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Friendly neighborhood arthouse theater? No such thing. I live in Memphis.

[Rit]

Snakes is the greatest movie ever made (this year).