Midweek DVD - Snakes On A Plane
Filed under: Midweek Movie — Malcolm Owen @ 12:41 pm
This got super-hyped on the internet, to the point that it could only exude coolness upon release. It didn’t do as well as people thought, primary because if you look at it, Snakes on a Plane is not really a good film. When the basic storyline is “FBI take witness from Hawaii to LA, but criminals put time-released snakes onto the plane to kill them, cue hijinks”, you might begin to worry a bit.
By the numbers it should be a decent action film, it had all the pieces you would expect from an action-drama-survival-horror film.
It had the build up before the plane, there was the introduction to most of the main characters that would survive the initial onslaught, it had passengers from every section of society that you can think of that would fly a plane in first class (The Paris Hilton Socialite Ripoff? Yep. The Suited English Businessman with High Stress Levels? Yes, although wearing a suit in Hawaii. The martial artist fighter? Dunno about that being normal…), you had the slow build-up to the release, the first battle, the defending, the attacking, the more defending, and so on. Yes, they tried everything, even getting Samuel L Jackson to star in it, but it didn’t stop it from being anything between mediocre and pathetic.
And yet… I like it…
Yes, I will readily admit to loving the film. It’s not the greatest film ever created, and it’s not the worst (close, but not quite), but there’s a certain feel towards watching it for the first time in a group setting that makes it go from bad to fantastic.
Watching it with the family, we could all see where the storyline was going to go, purely because it’s so obvious. (”Oh look, one pilot is going to check the wiring down a hatch in the cockpit, which happens to be dark, full of small cubbyholes that he must stick his hand into, and snakes. Since it’s the start of the incident and there are always 2 pilots on the plane, I cannot possibly think what’s going to happen next…”). We also laughed at the painful and blatantly obvious jokes/ways of death that happened (”Hey, he’s going to the toilet. I wonder what could possibly happen?”), and then just at bits of the storyline in general (We all cheered when the dog got “used”. We don’t like small yappy dogs that are kept in handbags).
By the end of the film, it was so bad and predictable, it came out the other side and back into greatness. We will probably watch it in the future again, but only in the very distant future, when we would have forgotten most of the storyline (…?), and even then watch only as a group.
Yes. It’s so bad, it’s good.
“Snakes on a Plane (Widescreen New Line Platinum Series)” (David R. Ellis)
