As Woody Allen said, the heart wants what it wants. So, why are you here?

Review: Snakes On A Plane (2006)

It's never wise to start a movie review with "I went into the movie with really low expectations and then this movie blew them out of the water!" But it's true. Except the movie blew my low expectations out of the water by being even worse than it actually was. Which was awesome. Let me explain.

Snakes on a Plane (or SOAP, as I shall call it for the rest of the post) is a movie so awful that it attracted a huge amount of publicity and attention for it's utterly hokey B-movie status - months and months before it came out. Word leaked out that Samuel L. Jackson had done a movie named "Snakes on a Plane," and that he only agreed to do the movie because it was named that. When he arrived at shooting to discover they'd renamed it "Flight 121" or something like that, he'd immediately called up the producers and explained "the only reason I'm doing this movie is because it's called 'Snakes on a Plane.' Change it back."

Flash-forward. After shooting the movie, the producers are disappointed. It's not edgy enough. Jackson, reminding everyone that he suggested this earlier, pushes for making the film into an R-rated gorefest during reshoots. Maybe people could die in gross and disgusting ways, such as having their eyes eaten out by snakes, or snakes chomping on their genitalia. Done and done.

They also held a SOAP fan contest to pick a line of dialogue to add to the movie. The winner: "I want these motherf---ing snakes off this motherf---ing plane!" All movies should have this contest. Think of the possibilities.

If you know me at all, you a) already knew all this information, because I'd told you. Multiple times. And b) you knew no one could possibly be as excited for this movie as I was. But you were wrong. Because everybody at my theatre was wildly enthusiastic for this movie. Far more so than I was.

I've never had a movie - not even opening night at a Star Wars or Lord of the Rings movie - that generated this much excitement in the theatre. We burst spontaneously into applause at various points in the movie (such as "we need to form a barrier between us and the snakes!"). People made fun of the movie to each other out loud, no matter how far down the row they had to talk - heck, people shouted stuff across the theatre at each other. When Jackson dropped the line, people applauded wildly, yelled encouragement, and threw rubber snakes at the screen. It was mayhem. It was awesome.

I can't review the actual movie seriously - no one can. Samuel Jackson thought that the only people who should be allowed to review this movie should be 13-year-old boys, and he's probably right. He was right about everything else. It's safe to say this, though: I've never had more fun in any movie theatre, ever (don't snicker. We don't all have to be 13-year-old boys here. Pervert.), even though I was spent half the movie trying not to cover my eyes from the low-rent but extremely disturbing computer-generated serpentine violence ("my God, it's got him in the penis!"), I spent the other half laughing my head off. It was so worth it.

Rating: I have absolutely no idea. Four stars out of five. Why not.

posted by Ben Wyman @ 12:29 AM