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Snakes on a Plane

Review by: Zak Santucci

ZakSantucci@TheCinemaSource.com

So you've heard about
the hype, you've seen the previews, maybe you've even
made up your own sequel (i.e. "Snakes on a Train" or
"Snakes on a Plain"), but does this movie live up to
what it promises? I mean, what does it even promise?
The trailer, is slightly tongue-in-cheek at best, but
still looks like a bad thriller. The question is not
only will you enjoy this movie, but what the hell
kinda movie is this?

At least that's what I was thinking. I've done
enough research to discover, it's not so bad it's
good, it's actually just a horror/thriller with a
little more comedy in it than most. After the
internet sensation, they went back and added some gore
and some nudity"¦ no complaining here.

But man, they added a lot of gore. If just for
that alone this movie's worth seeing. As a big
Evil Dead and Riki-Oh fan, I was right
at home. People vomit foam, every appendage
imaginable is attacked, and people even die from
getting trampled or something ridiculous like that.
As soon as the snakes are released, there are about 15
minutes straight of quick cuts, snake attacks, bloated
and poison-filled bodies falling all over, and
screaming. It's pretty intense.

Not only do you probably already know the plot,
but it's simple enough (and the title doubles as a
synopsis). A bad guy named Ed Kim kills someone. A
witness (played by Nathan Philips) sees the
murder. He is sent from Hawaii to Los Angeles to
testify. Ed Kim releases snakes on the plane to bring
down the plane and kill the witness. Sam
Jackson plays FBI agent Neville Flynn who
finds himself not only protecting the witness, but
also a whole plane of passengers. The assortment of
characters is cliché and slightly comical. David
Koechner is great as the resilient but
male-chauvinistic pilot. There's a germophobic 50
Cent rip off named Three G's with his two fat and
bumbling bodyguards, an effeminate male flight
attendant, a foppish Brit with no tolerance for
inconvenience nor Americans, a nervous honeymooning
couple on Xanex, an L.A. socialite with a Chihuahua
named "Mary-Kate", even our witness is a Red Bull
chugging surfer dude. Oh also, Julianna
Marguiles plays some kind of stewardess love
interest, but do you really care about all that? All
the good sex is in an airplane bathroom, complete with
marijuana and venomous nipple bites.

So I'd like to say this stuff is tongue-in-cheek
and a

little self-aware. Which I'm relatively sure it
is; But even if it wasn't, I enjoyed it for what it
was. It was an entertaining movie"¦ really
entertaining. Granted, I don't think these
filmmakers really knew what "suspense" was. For the
10 seconds leading up to the chaotic snake attack, we
saw hints of it, but after that it was cheap scares
and just an all-around bloodbath. There was
definitely room for more comedy, since I found myself
laughing when people got bit in the eyeball by a
venomous cobra. If scenes like that are clearly going
to illicit "ewww" and "haha" reactions, then go all
out and throw some more comedy in there. Also, they
spent a whole airplane disaster movie without one
engine going out. What's that about?

All in all, this movie is what Eight-Legged
Freaks should have been. Though I liked that
movie more than most, it really wasn't that good.
This movie on the other hand keeps a consistent tone
the whole way and excels at what it clearly set out to
do. And hey, if it didn't set out to do it, it fills
some niche of entertainment and I'm all for that.
It's literally a madcap thrill ride, and other cliché
review soundbytes you hear all the time.

Movie Grade: A "”

Synopsis:

On board a flight over the Pacific Ocean, an assassin, bent on killing a passenger who’s a witness in protective custody, lets loose a crate full of deadly snakes.