MOVIE REVIEW: 'Snakes on a Plane'


Slightly longer version of a review in Saturday's Oregonian:




Over two years ago (during a test-screening of "The Punisher," if memory serves), a hardcore film-geek pal told us about it.

"Have you heard," he said, "that Ronny Yu is developing a movie called 'Snakes on a Plane'?"

Pause.

"Guess what it's about?"

For me, anyway, this fellow represents Patient Zero of the "Snakes on a Plane" phenomenon. Like the millions who followed him, he found it hilarious -- and strangely comforting -- that someone in Hollywood was actually making a movie where the title was so plainly and honestly the premise of the film.

Particularly when the premise was this brazenly stupid.

[ UPDATE: The actual Patient Zero appears to be Harry Knowles, who wrote about the script sale way back in 2000. Thanks, Collider ! ]

As you probably know, over the next two years, like-minded souls found each other online -- and "Snakes on a Plane" inspired songs, fan art, t-shirts, homebrewed trailers and all manner of spontaneously user-generated, semi-ironic Internet hype. (Most of it's linked from the essential Web site SnakesOnABlog.com.) My personal favorite bit of fan participation was when someone pretending to be director Michael Bay posted an elaborate fake treatment for the film at CHUD.com -- featuring a snake named "Ace" trained to fly jumbo jets and a scene where the the pilot tells the tower, "There are snakes. On our plane. Over."

There have also been moments of high drama, as when director Yu exited the picture over "creative differences" (!) and was replaced by former stuntman and second-unit director David Ellis, or when New Line briefly changed the title to "Flight 121" and star Samuel L. Jackson forced them to change it back, or when the movie went into reshoots to make it as over-the-top as its "fan base" clearly wanted it to be.

Two years of this bizarre buildup have left me firmly convinced that the anticipation of "Snakes on a Plane" was, in fact, the true experience of "Snakes on a Plane" -- that the only way the movie could possibly live up to its hype was if it were "Die Hard," "The Naked Gun" and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" all at once, as directed by a "Killer"-era John Woo.

Well, I saw it Thursday night at 10 p.m., at a KUFO screening with a packed house of costumed fans. And while I'm usually loath to review movies this way, I feel compelled to qualify:

"Snakes on a Plane" -- seen this weekend with a packed house of (possibly drunk) people who've been following the "Snakes on a Plane" phenomenon from the beginning -- is one of the most raucous experiences I've ever had in a movie theater.

"Snakes on a Plane" -- seen on DVD or during a matinee by yourself or anytime after this weekend, really, free of all this pageantry -- will be pretty rough going.





As a friend sitting next to me put it before the movie began, "I feel like I'm waiting for the principal to come and start the film." Women showed up in evening gowns and/or adorned with rubber snakes, grinning like toothsome Medusas. People howled for free posters like they were being offered suckling pigs during a potato famine.

During the movie itself, the audience hissed during the slow parts, including the THX trailer. They howled at every instance of Red Bull product placement. They cheered whenever Jackson yelled a line or spewed a profanity. They counted down with the explosive timer that released the fanged villains on unsuspecting passengers, yelling "Snakes!" when it hit zero. And they went completely ballistic during a totally gratuitous middle section that's a mind-boggling opera of snakes biting people in all the places you’d least like to be bitten (use your imagination, because yes, they go there), followed by hideous deaths-by-swelling. They sang along to the '80s-style end-credits song, performed by an indie supergroup calling itself "Cobra Starship."

New Line, incredibly, has done a fairly good job of pandering to its target (read: Internet) audience. The movie's stupid and action-packed and full of terrible special effects and (alas) not nearly enough howler dialogue. Though I did love how the villain (Terry Chen) yells "Woo!" after beating a strung-up man like a kid hitting a piñata. I also loved his rationale for hiding every poisonous serpent on Earth on an airliner to kill a single witness:

"You think I didn't exhaust every option?!"

After saying this line, this idiot mastermind is never seen again. He'd distract from the carnage.

Now, as a movie, "Snakes" is painfully pedestrian and meaningless in the writing department -- at least until it gets in the air and unleashes the serpents, after which it turns into a pretty decent disaster movie. (This is a relative term, folks.) It sets up an oddball cast and kills a surprising number of them with relish and bad CGI. And while I do wish Jackson wasn't so subdued, a couple of the actors -- notably Todd Louiso as a rambling snake expert and David Koechner as a sleazy pilot -- have a lot of fun finding the goofiest line readings they can. Still, I wish….

Oh, forget it. I give up. Diving into the demerits of a movie where people are dodging snakes whipping through a depressurized cabin is a bit like trying to pick apart the subtext of Space Mountain. If you see it, make sure you see it this weekend -- like, tonight -- with an audience prone to yelling at the screen. Any later and you'll be cringing with embarrassment.

Campy 'Snakes on a Plane' best seen with yelping Internet fans (The Oregonian, Aug. 19, 2006)

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Posted: Sat - August 19, 2006 at 12:00 AM        

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