Warning: Spoliers throughout; Snakes (pictures, discussion of) throughout!

Hi all, thanks for bearing with me and coming to read this delayed piece on Snakes on a Plane. Those of you who read the set-up post for this one know that I essentially went into this film expecting something pretty noteworthy. SOAP was commonly referred to/ joked about by my friends and I back when it was originally released having become something of an internet sensation. This was entirely the point of course, once the filmmakers got wind of the films’ buzzworthy status, they amped up the ridiculous, B-Movie leanings of the film and pushed it up to an age rating of 15.* However, in truth having watched SOAP I feel… slightly disappointed. It wasn’t as nuts as I thought it was going to be!

SOAP for the unintiated stars Samuel L. Jackson as an FBI agent tasked with escorting a young man named Sean (Nathan Phillips) on a flight from Honolulu to L.A- Sean having witnessed a mob hit. In an attempt to kill Sean, the mobster has snakes hidden on the plane and pheromones sprayed on the leis (the flower necklaces that you always see in media associated with Hawaii) given to the passengers- pheromones which cause the snakes to become ‘hyperaggressive’. In terms of plot, that’s pretty much all you know. The title of the film IS the plot.

So yes, we watch as Samuel L. Jackson tries to keep as many people alive as possible, with the courageous Sean and flight attendant Claire (Julianna Margulies) assisting at various points. With a fairly uncomplicated (and frankly, unimportant) plot and characters that never really develop beyond surface level the film, like any good B-Movie, is reliant on its actions, thrills and shocks to engage the audience. And indeed there are some pretty effective moment in this film. A man being swallowed whole by an enormous constrictor snake, the initial frenzy of snake attacks and Jackson killing a snake with a harpoon gun all spring to mind. The snakes are obviously CGI, but this doesn’t really detract from things. One major problem though is that all the build up to the snakes being released is basically pointless. The film is utterly dull up until that point and the first quarter of the film could probably have just been cut. We don’t need a set-up, we don’t need character backstories, its just filler.

But the bigger problem for me is that the film doesn’t quite commit to its’ crazy. A film like this live or dies on its spectacle, and while there are some moments as I’ve discussed above they are just that- moments. They don’t come thick or fast enough, and the spectacle isn’t wild enough. The film is stuck somewhere between being a ludicrous pastiche of B-Movie nonsense and something slightly more coherent- with moments of human drama and even romance that feel like they belong to a more sensible film. In trying to be both, it achieves neither. Yes there’s a snake killed with a microwave which has a ‘snake’ setting, and yes Jackson saying: ‘I’m so tired of these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane’ IS funny, but where were our flying snakes? Our mutant snakes? Why didn’t a snake shoot a gun? Maybe I’m being silly, but I feel like the film should have been sillier!

That said the film hangs together better than it might have done. Rather than a hot mess, it is pretty watchable- at least as watchable as Hard Rain, and actually quite a bit better than Dark Crimes, Red Surf or Beastly. I could have done without some of the leering at women’s bodies done by the camera -presumably under the excuse that it’s what old B-Movies did-, and it seems that in 2006 (when SOAP was released) some quarters of Hollywood thought limp jokes about a character who ‘looks gay’ but actually isn’t were a fucking riot. But largely this film is fun. Not great. Not even good. But watchable.

2 stars!: **

-Tom

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