Snakes on a Plane

Snakes on a Plane wins a sibilant nine snakes out of ten.

The name, or so the legend goes, came from a Hollywood Bigwig's night out where the assembled scripters elected to invent the Worst Film Pitch Ever™. It was a producer, Craig Berenson, who put forward the idea under the name Venom. Eventually the title was changed, by an anonymous genius, to the brilliant serpent-and-aviation based one which became so widely loved. Samuel L Jackson took the lead role on the strength of the same piece of brilliant wordsmithery that led to the Snakes on a Plane cult being established a year before its release.

The film contained all that was hoped for. Snakes. A plane. Samuel L Jackson. At one point, Mr (Sir?) Jackson punches a snake in the face, which tells you virtually all you need know. At other points, he stabs them with a broken bottle, zaps them with a taser, shoots them with a service pistol, fooms them with a flamethrower, and at one point impales one with a well aimed harpoon. The film, essentially, is a series of ever more hilarious ways of battling reptiles. That said, the reptiles don't go down easily (apart from on that one guy who was bitten on the trouser snake). There is a lot of snake-fodder in this film. It's good; Sam Jackson doesn't get it all his own way. There are only around 30 people left at the end, from a planeful.

It's sufficiently well acted that the actors do not detract from the story (I use the term loosely) as I had feared they might. Apart from Jackson - who plays his part with suitably overblown drama - they were mediocre, but in a film entitled Snakes on a Plane, we're not looking for little gold statues. The special effects, equally, were passable. The addition of a Snake's Eye camera was bizarre and brilliant. Apparently snakes see things just the same as us but green and somewhat blurred. The missing snake is lost because the beginning and end of the film were too long. Essentially, it needed even more snakes being beaten up and even less talking.

The film, I understand, was not popular with critics. Perhaps they are all wrong and I am the only one who is right, and I should take their jobs and their cars and I should probably sleep with their girlfriends too. Perhaps I like this sort of thing and critics don't. Perhaps they took the hump at not being allowed to see a preview showing. In any case, it seems that they have missed the point. No-one names a film Snakes on a Plane without knowing exactly what they are doing. The film is a festival of adolescent adrenaline. Very adolescent. There are boobs. Much of the film was hilarious. When Jackson finds a harpoon gun in the hold of the plane at shoots it through a snake thirty feet away, we laughed. That moment gained the film one of the snakes in my rating. It was brilliant fun for the duration. It can't be that way by happy accident. As I keep insisting, the film was supposed to be like that. It's called Snakes on a Plane.

Snakes. On a Plane.

You shouldn't need to be reading this. The title alone should have made you run out to the nearest cinema to catch it, quickly, before it ends its run. If not? You clearly hate fun.