This film's incredible fan-generated buzz and subsequent box office fizzle has taught Hollywood an important lesson — even if they number in the millions, teens on the Internet with too much free time on their hands do not guarantee you a box office smash. It seems that a good portion of the folks who built fansites around this film months before it came out, where actually too young to go see this campy R-rated horror film in theaters. Leaving only a smaller audience of drunken college students left to buy tickets. You may be wondering why I bring this up and what it all has to do with the quality of the film. The unprecedented Internet chatter surrounding this film allowed the makers to go back and add more of what fans were calling for. So just because a teenager wants to see a snake latch onto a man's penis, do we need to give it to them?
Here's how the story goes, Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips, WOLF CREEK) witnesses gangster Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson, ROMEO MUST DIE) murder a prosecutor while he's out on his motorbike in Hawai'i. After FBI agent Neville Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson, PULP FICTION) saves Sean from Kim's hitmen, the agent convinces Sean to testify in L.A. against the bad guy. In an effort to stop Sean's testimony, Kim plants a crate full of deadly snakes on his plane, sprays them with pheromones to make them aggressive and hopes that the reptiles will either strike Sean or cause enough havoc to bring down the plane.
Outside of Neville and Sean, the other terrified people on the 5-hour flight across the Pacific include: head flight attendant Claire Miller (Julianna Margulies, TV's E.R.), Paris Hilton-like rich girl Mercedes (Rachel Blanchard, TV's CLUELESS), germ-obsessed rapper Three G's (Flex Alexander, SHE'S ALL THAT), Three G's bodyguards Troy (Kenan Thompson, FAT ALBERT) and Big Leroy (Keith Dallas, UNDERCLASSMEN), veteran flight attendant Grace (Lin Shaye, A CINDERELLA STORY), effeminate flight attendant Ken (Bruce James), pretty young flight attendant Tiffany (Sunny Mabrey, THE NEW GUY), unaccompanied minor Curtis (Casey Dubois, THE FINAL CUT), Curtis' younger brother Tommy (Daniel Hogarth), annoyed and jerky British snob Paul (Gerard Plunkett, EIGHT BELOW), kick boxer Chen Leong (Terry Chen, I, ROBOT), young mother with child Maria (Elsa Pataky, BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR), newlyweds Ashley (Emily Holmes, 2006's THE WICKER MAN) and aviophobic Tyler (Tygh Runyan, 15 MINUTES), quiet, ophidiophobic FBI agent John Sanders (Mark Houghton, ELEKTRA), sexist co-pilot Rick (David Koechner, THANK YOU FOR SMOKING), expendable Capt. Sam McKeon (Tom Butler, ), desk-bound FBI agent Hank Harris (Bobby Cannavale, THE STATION AGENT) and snake expert Dr. Steven Price (Todd Louiso, HIGH FIDELITY).
With such a lengthy list, one can easily expect some of those characters will not make it to Los Angeles. And I didn't even mention the horny mile high club couple or the guy who went to the bathroom to drain his snake or the fat woman in the muumuu. None of the characters are developed beyond types; sometimes they're actually ridiculously clichéd caricatures or just a collection of over-the-top twitches.
It seems the writers sat around and thought up everything that could be frightening about being trapped on a plane filled with snakes and tried to cram it all in. I was reminded of SNAKES director David R. Ellis' CELLUAR, which crammed in every possible thing that could go wrong with a cellphone when one needs to stay on the line. However, unlike that film, SOAP doesn't string those details together in a tension building way too often. Likewise, SNAKES never develops solid enough characters for us to care about.
So I get back to the beginning of my review, the film targets itself too much to what its juvenile fanbase wanted, resulting in a film filled with dozens of snake attacks that create few scares and don't put the main characters in enough danger for us to care. With a title like SNAKES ON A PLANE, one can't take things too seriously. I expected campiness, but the first act's character development is so bad, we don't care one way or the other whether a snake bites them or not. We just kind of expect it in certain cases.
However, toward the middle, the film gets into a groove and accomplishes to build some real tension. This is also where some of the campy snake jokes actually work. I got a real chuckle out of a shot from "snake vision" coming upon a foot clothed in a snakeskin boot. Then all of a sudden, the film gives Neville a final task that seems extremely rushed through. And his final solution to the snake problem is quite ridiculous.
You might be asking yourself, what were you expecting from SNAKES ON A *BLANK BLANK* PLANE? I was hoping for some creepy scares and campy humor. I got some of that, but it didn't work nearly as much as it should have. Too many silly, clichéd characters and no tension building got in the way of both the humor and the scares. I give it an extra half star because of its footnote in film history as well as its ability to provide popcorn entertainment for at least part of its running time. If you're a fan of campy horror films, than check it out. All others should watch PIRANHA instead to see how campy horror can be done effectively.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
