Two very distinctly different
reviews for:

Snakes on a Plane

Samuel L. Jackson
Julianne Margulies
Nathan Phillips
Rachel Blanchard
Directed by: David R. Ellis

A group of us decided to get together the night before the official opening of the marketing juggernaut Snakes on a Plane, two of us with thoughts of reviewing it for various entertainment websites. Ethan, for www.popsyndicate.com, and I for the very site you are hanging out at now, www.stumblebumstudios.com.

After the film, our opinions couldn’t have been more different on what we had just seen.


Two men enter and one man leaves… happy that is. Here are our two very different opinions on the exact same movie experience.


Dana Place

Plot: A witness to the murder of a police officer by a Hawaiian drug lord is offered safe passage to Los Angeles by FBI agent Nelville Flynn (Jackson) to testify in a federal court. The drug lord learns about the flight and unleashes a crate of poisonous snakes on the unsuspecting passengers and crew.

Review: Watching this film I really couldn’t help but think of the rash of disaster in the 70s and early 80’s. Burt Convey in a bad silk shirt running through a volcano, or Steve McQueen in a burning high rise. Snakes on a Plane is a parody of these films ratcheted up with B movie horror film gore and silly deaths, tied together with a plot so ludicrous that Roger Corman would toss it in the trash.

An actual examination of the film will point out plot holes and errors big enough to drive an 18 wheeler through. The actual story gets more outlandish and silly every time a character opens their mouth. The writer’s and director of the film don’t try to explain anything with something as useless as logic or reason. Snakes on a Plane is what it is and you either accept or you don’t. If you are looking for any kind of coherent thought in your action movies you may wan to give this one a pass.

Snakes on A Plane is nothing more than the movie suggests, snakes on a plane attacking people. Nothing more, nothing less. There is even a point in the film where a police officer is caught up on the plot of the film and verbalizes what everyone in the audience is thinking “This is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard.” If everyone involved didn’t feel obligated to actually make a full length movie then Snakes could have very easily been just shots of people running around screaming, with poisonous snakes hanging from various parts of their bodies. But that is the point.

This movie never claims to be anything more, never even asks to be anything more. All you have to do is sit back and enjoy the craziness. One liners and plotline resolutions that belong in a bad student film or low budget horror film are peppered throughout the movie and all you can do is laugh. Because here is the thing. It is intentional. This film does what we all do when we get together in a group and rent Slumber Party Massacre I, II, and III, or the American Ninja films. We laugh and wallow in its camp. The only difference is that the studio is in on the joke. This movie has to be seen with a group of friends in a crowded theater. A DVD viewing alone won’t do justice. Being a fan of bad horror and action films I was more than happy to roll around in the mess.


Ethan Nahte

One of the biggest hyped movies of the year - for over a year thanks to the Internet - has been Snakes On A Plane starring Samuel L. Jackson and Julianna Margulies (ER appropriately enough) along with Sunny Mabrey, Nathan Phillips and a string of other characters you are meant to love or hate played by the likes of Rachel Blanchard, Flex Alexander, Kenan Thompson, Lin Shaye and Gerard Plunkett to name a few. The studios hadn’t put much behind the marketing of this movie, originally, but due to all of the hype, this monstrous movie took on a life of its own to the degree that the studio decided to go back and do some extra shooting to add some more violence and blood. That’s one thing this film has plenty of is blood, pus, gore and wounds.

The basic premise of Snakes On A Plane (or Snakes on a mother f*(*$@gplane! as Jackson’s character puts it) is that Sean (Phillips) witnesses a murder and is now a target to prevent him from testifying. Flynn (Jackson) is an FBI agent that is trying to protect Sean and get him from Hawaii to L.A. so he can testify after one failed assassination attempt. The bad guy, Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson) claims that he tried everything he could think of and has no other choice but to try to cause mayhem and a possible crash by putting snakes on a plane. He only made one attempt on the guy, so obviously Kim is an uncreative moron when it comes to making a hit.

I won’t give anything away, but needless to say, after a semi-slow start, hundreds of venomous snakes get loose and slither rampant on a jetliner. They are extremely aggressive and attack everything that moves, including each other, coke cans, naked people joining the mile high club (It’s sort of like watching Friday the 13th where you know the naughty kids are going to get it first.), etc. There are cobras, pit vipers, rattlesnakes, asps and even a made up snake or two.

Every time that everyone seems to be out of harm’s way, something else happens, like that’s any kind of surprise. As a matter of fact, there aren’t really any surprises in this film. It’s so predictable that Stevie Wonder can see it coming. We saw the movie at the first showing on Thursday night in a theater filled primarily of teenagers. When there were attacks, most of the audience cheered or laughed. I don’t believe there were any scenes that really made people jump out of their seats. Of course some of the scenes that made people laugh were due to some goofy attacks. One would think that this film was written by two pre-adolescent boys who had shared a can of light beer and started telling stupid gross out jokes and somehow it got written down. Of course this only means that this idiotic movie will become a cult favorite of the kids and make millions.

Let it be said that if you want a dumb action movie that you don’t have to think about that’s filled with one-liners and some nudity, then this is the waste of money...I mean this is the film for you. You will have to use that lightened load from your wallet to remind you to suspend your disbelief and not think because the entire plot is so bogus. Here’s why:

First, Hawaii doesn’t have snakes. This drove me crazy until 2/3 of the way through the film a character mentions this fact. Which means that the snakes had to be shipped by one guy from the desert area of California. How the hell did he get them to Hawaii to begin with without being detected?!?

Second, anyone who has flown, especially in the window seat knows that the aluminum hull of a plane gets a bit chilly. I’m a hot natured person and I even get cool on occasion. Not to mention that the cargo area, although not cold since they have to carry live animals, gets cool as well. Snakes and cool/cold temperatures don’t mix. It makes them lethargic.

Third, they give the snakes ultra-cool vision which we see from their point of view quite frequently from the snake cam. In this film, not only can they see a good distance off, but they can actually make out shapes with this vision. Not too much flicking of the tongue action which is what a snake really uses to sense its surroundings.

Fourth, I won't say what character gets bitten by a cobra, but let's suffice it to say that a cobra does not inject a poisonous venom that attacks the blood stream. It attacks the nervous system and causes paralysis. The character bitten by the cobra would've been paralyzed, more than likely. Not to mention that with the character's small size, he would not have lasted more than 15 minutes and the person who attempts to suck the poison out would've had to do it within 10 minutes of the bite or it would have no effect due to the fact it would've already made it's way through the body.

This will probably freak some people out and make them wary of flying or opening their cabinets at home for that matter. It’ll probably also cause people who find a snake to automatically try and kill every snake they see, which is a bad thing, unless you love a world overrun with rodents. If you do see the movie, at least stay for the credits for the music video. It was the best part.
 

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