Snakes on a Plane

Snakes on a Plane is a B-grade movie that has A-list star Samuel L Jackson slumming with a bunch of nearly unknowns and a plane full of snakes, both real and digital. The brains behind this film thought it would be brilliant to combine mankind’s two worst fears — snakes and planes — in order to create a high-flying, edge of your seat action/thriller/comedy and the end result is better than it has any right to be. While that might be due in part to Sam Jackson, Snakes certainly owes much of its success to the world of blogs, which gave the film a massive pre-release publicity boost and offered up ideas that were not only embraced by the bigwigs but also incorporated into the final product; Snakes is edgier thanks to that input. The computer-animated snakes look like crap, however, and even though the movie explains away the reptilian aggression, their malevolence toward airline electronics goes a little too far. Beyond those flaws, Snakes is filled with funny one-liners, a sexy Mile High Club scene in a luxurious airline bathroom (they have those?), and enough action-packed thrills and chills to maintain viewer interest. And although the typical character stereotypes of disaster movies may appear here in abundance they are fleshed-out with quirky characteristics. The audio commentary that accompanies the film is funny thanks to wisecracking joker Jackson and tends to be pretty informative about the production process (although it could do with a few less people on the track). The blooper reel and deleted scenes are interesting, as are the documentaries "Snakes on a Blog” and "Meet the Reptiles,” but the music video, documentaries on visual effects and the "making of” are skip-worthy. On DVD, Snakes on a Plane should come into its own with cult fans eating it up in droves. (Alliance Atlantis)