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August 18, 2006

Snakes.

Snakes on a plane.

Snakes on a muthafuckin' plane.

Muthafuckin' snakes on a muthafuckin' plane.

It's really just that simple.

If you want to understand the complexity of the film, try snakes on pretty much every bodily part you can imagine that doesn't excrete solid waste.

Truth is, the movie does find a clever way to turn the third act into a third act and not just more of the same. It's not so great that I feel compelled to discuss it conceptually, but it is clever enough.

That might be the defining notion of this film. It's good enough. It's funny enough. It's thrilling enough. It's enjoyable enough.

The funny thing about all the internet stuff is that it really lessens the value of the film, it doesn't increase it. If this was just some movie that people found, not expecting a $20 million-plus opening weekend, it would be even more fun and, I think, more financially successful.

It's one of the bad parts of the internet culture…and the Traditional Media that follows it around like drooling puppies all too often. Few things aside from Paris Hilton's vagina seem to be able to survive the white hot light of obsessive web attention. And all the passion about Snakes - which, of course, was based on a title, Sam Jackson, and an idea of an idea - raises the bar of expectation beyond anything reasonable.

Still, it delivers exactly what it claims to be offering.

It's true. Director David Ellis couldn't find the dramatic tension in a nun taking a pregnancy test. For a guy using CG snakes in almost every shot involving live actors, he is horrible at establishing space. There are classic killer thriller beats, like a character in a tight area desperate get to a specific point, with the possibility of snakes jumping out at any time. It works in spite of the direction, but had SoaP been directed by a uniquely talented young (or old) visualist, it might have been a true thriller classic.

For instance, Executive Decision is a much better movie. Passenger 57… a better movie. And sharing a similar core, this is basically The Poseidon Adventure on a plane… with snakes. It's nowhere near as good as that film. But it is better, amazingly, than Poseidon. Wolfgang Petersen farts more interesting shots than David Ellis… but this script is much better than what they went forward with on Poseidon.

The casting was also interesting. Aside from the obvious home run of hiring Sam Jackson, it swung from inspired (David Koechner, Todd Louiso, Bobby Canavale) to uninteresting (Daniel Hogarth) to the embarrassing (Byron Lawson). Keenan Thompson finally gets some lines worth saying near the end. Lin Shaye is always a hoot. The stewardesses are all nice to look at and reasonably effective. I kept waiting for Elsa Pataky to nurse her baby (I think that's the character the Maxim cover model played), though the performance was actually quite solid, aside from being a pretty face.

Of course, the frustration of Koechner, Louiso, and Cannavale was that they were so little used. Cannavale was essentially the John Cusack (a la Con Air) and Louiso was a great character for this film… who essentially got to do nothing that really made him any more special than Louiso's performance. And Koechner is the best used of the group, but more for him to do could have been nothing but good.

Still, for a dumb movie about snakes loose on a plane, it was good, weird fun. If I walked into this as though it was Final Destination, I would have been pleasantly surprised. Instead, I wasn't surprised at all. But it was nothing if not a pleasant, unchallenging, fun night at the movies. And sometimes, that is enough.

E Me.

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