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Cheesy 'Snakes on a Plane' slithers with fun

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

Well, you can't say the title didn't warn you.

Exactly as advertised, soon after a South Pacific Airlines 747 jumbo jet takes off from Honolulu for Los Angeles, a time-triggered detonator rips open boxes and boxes of flower leis in which ribbons of deadly snakes lurk. They slither about the plane, short-circuiting the wiring, shutting down the electronic avionics system and, oh yeah, biting and killing passengers and creating mass mayhem.

New Line Cinema

'Snakes on a Plane'

B-

The verdict: A glut of snakes slithering around a plane, as promised, part intense and part silly.

Director: David R. Ellis
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Byron Lawson, Nathan Phillips
Run time: 105 minutes
Release date: August 18, 2006
Rating: R for language, a scene of sexuality and drug use, and intense sequences of terror and violence.
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Snakes... on the brain!
Serpents land on the big screen with alarming regularity.

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Official movie site

That's about it for plot in Snakes on a Plane, the cheesy phenomenon of hype geared to 13-year-old boys, some of whom may have helped shape the movie in Internet chat rooms over the past year or so. Picture a combination of the three A's — one part Airport, the vintage disaster movie; one part Airplane!, the campy parody of the peril-in-the-sky genre; and one part Anaconda, the killer-snakes-on-the loose flick.

Not that it really matters why the snakes are aboard, but it seems that an eyewitness to a mob whacking has to be transported to the trial in L.A., under the protection of FBI agent Neville Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson).

And naturally the accused gangster has henchmen with herpetological connections, who can acquire and sneak exotic snakes into the cargo hold of a jet airliner not designated until a few minutes before takeoff.

If you buy that, answer me this: What could be more conspicuous than a large shipment of leis being flown from Hawaii to the mainland?

OK, so logic is not high on the priorities of screenwriters John Heffernan and Sebastian Gutierrez or director David R. Ellis (Final Destination 2). For them, the point is getting the snakes into the air vents, out the baggage compartments, crawling throughout the plane and into the faces and at the throats of the passengers and crew.

Thanks to the wonders of computer graphics, they do this quite well, which is to say enough to creep out any normal moviegoer. The only mystery that remains is why Snakes on a Plane was not shot in 3-D. Surely this is the movie that the gimmicky process was made for.

Like any disaster movie worth its venom, we get to know a little about the likely victims before they get in harm's way. There's the sneering British man appalled by being bumped from first class to coach, and even more disdainful of the baby and little doggie sitting near him. Naturally he will meet a particularly gruesome end and no one will much mind.

Then there's the hip-hop artist with a cleanliness fetish, who travels with industrial disinfectant and an entourage. There are the honeymooners with flying anxiety issues, two young boys flying unescorted, a suspicious kickboxer and a lumpy lady in a muumuu.

We never really get to know the two who eagerly pile into the bathroom together to join the mile-high club and encounter a snake instead, but then someone has to be the first to go.

Presumably the filmmakers understand that you can only entertain an audience so long by knocking off passengers, so then Agent Flynn gets in the act, risking all by descending into the snake-infested cargo hold to reset the electric breakers and get the air conditioning started again.

And even though the movie quickly announced itself as shameless, you wouldn't think it would sink as low as a snake's belly to knock off the two pilots and demand that a passenger land the plane in L.A.

Jackson makes a capable, gruff, profanity-slinging action hero. Julianna Margulies (TV's ER and Sopranos) has a few good moments as the flight attendant on — uh-oh — her final flight before retiring. And Flex Alexander has a dandy panic attack as the dirt-phobic recording star. But all of the actors are mere support to the digital snakes.

Let's face it, you have probably already made up your mind about going to see this movie. If you are leaning in that direction, know that you will get your share of bloodshed, jump-out-atcha jolts and a few giggles. If you are leaning away, you are not missing anything you need to see.

But if you go, stay for the title song music video over the final credits. Snakes on a Plane is that kind of shock-and-kid picture.