Ssssspectacular

It's been awhile, and I apologize for the delay. But I waited until I found one truly worthy, and here it is. Movie review the fifth:

Snakes on a Plane

There comes a decisive moment in every movie, one where either you feel like the show has failed to meet your expectations, or you realize you’re going to leave the theater satisfied. Thankfully, the latter was true of Snakes on a Plane, and the moment of satisfaction came when, after the plane was deluged by hundreds of squirmy, slithery, vicious snakes, one absolutely giant motherfucker (read: Boss Snake) gets on the scene, slowly coils the full length of its body around some hapless dude in his seat, then proceeds to wrap its mouth around the guy’s head, and swallow it whole. (And I apologize for those of you who haven’t seen it and didn’t want to be spoiled, but it’s your own damn fault for missing the opening.) As if I hadn’t already gotten the memo, this moment officially declared Snakes on a Plane to be one badass movie.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t just a “so bad it’s good” type of show. Sure, there were plenty of elements of that. One can never fully escape the straight-up re-fucking-diculous premise of the movie entirely. Plus, some of the snake attacks are more aimed at being funny than frightening, which lends to the cheese effect. But overall, the movie lacked the requisite god-awful dialogue to be a “so bad it’s good” picture. It mostly came across as being unabashedly impossible, but endlessly entertaining.

For example, there were a lot of genuinely funny moments. They even took one joke straight from the MZRM firm (“You people?”), and you’ve got to give props for that. It also had some nicely quirky yet believable characters. Plus, some of the snake attacks were frickin’ wicked. There’s always that feeling one could jump out at any moment, and sometimes they did. One of those moments had me practically on an ejector seat, I jumped so damn high. And then there were the side-effects of the snake attacks. I hadn’t even considered that issue beforehand. Some were pretty gruesome, others just cool. Especially when intentionally awful characters suffer hilariously horrific deaths at the hands of dozens of snakes.

There were only a couple things that disappointed me. I love Sam Jackson, and there were plenty of good Sam Jackson moments here. But I would have liked a few more. Particularly that he should have gotten to fight the Boss Snake. I mean, come on - - who wouldn’t want to see Samuel L vs. a 20 foot python in a climactic battle? That’s worth the price of admission alone.

There’s always the nagging question of “What the fuck?” that plagues any attempts at logic, of course. But you’ve gotta let that slide now and then. Bottom line – I hyped this movie all summer, and it pretty much delivered the goods, which is a tremendous feat. So don’t hate.

Seriously, dude. Snakes. Hsssss.

My score: A-
Recommendation: Fuck yeah.