Once in a great while a movie comes along that redefines a nation. Steamboat Willie, Gone With The Wind, Star Wars, and now.....SNAKES ON A PLANE!! A social gathering more than a movie. A place where like-minded individuals come together to share their thoughts and ideas and comments and queries with one another. To laugh and love and cry together.
On this night however, it started roughly. At an 8:15pm showing we arrived at the Pasadena Pacific theatre after food and drink around 6:30pm. And nary a person in sight knew whether or not there was going to be a line up before the show. Not the ticket taker, not the manager, no body. And that was the way it went up until about 7:30pm. All we heard all night was, "There hadn't been any lines all day. We don't expect one now."
Hmmm, maybe there haven't been any lines all day because it's Friday!!! And maybe now it's a weekend night and you should be expecting a line!
Finally around 7:45pm someone grew a brain and let us line up inside. Never mind that there were 20 other people besides us wondering when the hell a line was going to form. Then the fucking unbelievable happened. Mr. Boz and I were going to have our picture taken by Mrs. Boz in front of the Snakes on a Plane movie stand up. But before the flash could snap and the picture take, a Pacific Theatre Nazi emerged out of no-where and told us, "No pictures are allowed to be taken in the theatre!"
"Why?"
"It's our policy. No pictures!"
So begrudgingly the camera gets put away and bad moods around. In all my years, I've never been told that I couldn't take a picture inside a theatre! So tell me, what did this theatre do when Revenge of the Sith or Return of the King opened? Smash and destroy every sci-fi geek that stopped and took a picture of themselves? Mindless enforcement of a retarded policy. And evidently that's the sort of thing that truthbringer.com inductee Kelly hates the most. I had never seen him rawled up before, but goddamn is it fun to watch.
This is just a nice "FUCK YOU" to Pasadena Pacific.
As customary before the show we must be anally raped by commercials for 20 minutes. Because I guess our $10.00 tickets with $12.00 popcorn and soda aint enough for theaters this day. Per the norm we either get a new LA TIMES commercial, or a new commercial for Coca-Cola. This time it's Coke. And it's a spin off of Grand Theft Auto looking video game. Except the guy is helping everyone he fucking runs into. And then he buys them all Cokes. I thought the point of GTA was to cause mayhem, not be a gentleman to absolute everyone. I thought it was Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, not Grand Theft Auto: Nice City!!
Finally through a motley crew of inane commercials and only a decent preview of Jackass 2, God blesses us with Snakes on a Plane!
And what a night! Lemme tell you, something about Snakes on a Plane. This is a great movie! This movie will kick your ass and have you laughing and kicking up a riotous fit. . . . As long as you see it with a bunch of other like minded individuals. If you see this thing by yourself, or even on a date with just two of you, this will not be nearly half as fun unless you've got a crew of at least four with you.
So a kid, I can't remember the name of the character, there are so many names in this movie that aren't neccessary to remember. We all know they're snake bait. Just soulless meat filled socks. This kid wittnesses a Yakuza (I'm assuming Yakuza because he's obviously a mobster, and he's Japanese) "hit". And I mean hit literally. He hangs a guy upside down by his feet and beats the living shit out of him with a baseball bat. The kid wrecks outta town ASAP! But yet somehow they find out who the hell this kid is and set out to kill him. But there's one thing they didn't count on. Samuel L. Jackson. He's a bad ass motherfucker for crying out loud! He's an FBI Agent who needs to get the retard from Hawaii to Los Angeles in order to testify against the Yakuzo jerk. At first meet he tells him, "Do exactly as I say, and you'll live." And that will be a running motif through the whole film.
Long story short he gets the kid to an airport and they pull what they think is a sneaky double cross and board a civilian airline. But you know the Yakuza, they have men everywhere, and they find out which airplane they're boarding. One henchman decides to spray some sort of fluid on a bunch of lei's that will be handed out to other passengers as they board. Little to their knowledge, the leis are covered in pheremone's. I know...I know.
Blah, blah no snakes yet. Keenan Thompson from Good Burger is some guy named Sweet G's bodygaurd. Pssh*, the day I let Keenan Thompson be my bodygaurd is the day I need my vault of cheeseburgers protected. Not half as funny as the real first name of the guy playing Sweet G. Hand to God, his first name is Fresh. I am not kidding you.
Finally we're in the air, and we see the snakes behind a barred cage. And holy crap, on the cage is a timer. And it's counting down. The timer is counting down to snakes. A young and pretty couple make it into the bathroom to head up to the mile high club and at that point the timer reaches 4 seconds. And the whole theatre and I were counting down with it. Because this is what we payed for.
4...
3...
2...
1...
SNAKES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And all proverbial hell breaks loose. The first to die are the romantic fools in the bathroom. One snake even gets to breast feed a little. Next up, some dude taking a leak in the other bathroom. It seems a rattlesnake was having a fight with his anaconda. Next, some ugly fat bitch snoring through the whole flight while people are dying. She didn't even have to open her mouth, or speak to let me know that I wanted to see her dead. I have no idea whether or not she was a bitch, or a jolly old soul. I've been forced to sit next to people like her on long trips and I could not wait to see her venom induced corpse.
The snakes go ape shit. And the entire coach section is losing people by the numbers. What struck me as funny is that there was a husband and wife duo on board. The husband terrorfied of flying is wondeering why the plane looks so empty. SO EMPTY. "Because," his wife explains, "It's the red eye!." Ohhhh. Okay. Now I know why there aren't that many people on board. But as soon as the snake hit the fan there must have been about 900 bodies lying in the aisles. What the hell happened to not that many people?
Finally, the only person on board the plane with a gun and the means to do something about the snake problem becomes wise to the hub-bub downstairs. His partner gets off his ass and is thusly attacked by a plethora of snakes. Set upon by a confectionary cocktail of snake venom. He is not long for this world. And this makes Samuel L. pissed off! He hatches a plan and keeps the snakes at bay by building barriers between the snakes and coach. During the momentary respite we now have to deal with the wounds of the victims. First up a 5 year old boy. That's right, a 5 year old boy gets bit by a snake in a horror movie. TAKE THAT MPAA!! A latin woman with a baby aboard tells us she used to have to deal with snake bites in her country. She takes a pin from her shirt, (Who the hell let her on board with a brooch! I thought securtity was supposed to scan for sharp objects!!) and punctures the bite. A jelatinous glop of puss and fluids flows forth, and she then leans in to suck out the venom. AAAAAAAH!!! Her putting her mouth and that pulsating gorpy mess is 100 times more horrorfying than anything the snakes can do to her. What a brave woman. I'd have taken one look at that free flowing river of bacteria and said, "Heh, you're on your own kid." Besides, sucking venom out of a wound is a completley useless gesture.
Things wouldn't be so bad aboard that plane if it wasn't for the fact that we're not just dealing with dangerous snakes. We're dealing with smart dangerous snakes. They know exactly which processing board to knock out in order for the plane to make a perilous plunge to its utter destruction. And just as soon as one board gets fixed, the snakes knock out another one. Goddamn, those are some smart snakes. I haven't seen snakes this smart since Tremors.
All the snake attackings and the like are good and fine and all, but there's one reason and one reason alone why we all came to this theatre tonight. And when that reason reared its head there was only one thing we could do. Recite the line along with it.
"I have had enough of these motherfucking snakes, on this motherfucking plane!!!!!"
FINAL ANALYSIS!
Only see this movie with friends, alone this is just a mediocre film. David R. Ellis, a stuntman turn director who'se past credits include Cellular, is just that. A director. No flare or anything like that. Just a straightforward film with a shitload of snakes. That's pretty much it.
Of all the unbelievablity of the film, Keenan Thompson once again turns in the most unrealistic performance. By landing the giant 747 Jet Plane. After logging 2,000 hours of flying lessons. On his Playstation. And then he does it successfully.
The one thing he's done in the movie successfully.
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