Broken Little Person Sitting On A Tree Limb

Starring: Samual L. Jackson and a lot of snakes

Director: Oh, does it really matter?

Studio: Who cares?

Year: 2006

To provide a quick qualifier, I have to admit that I became fascinated with how 'Snakes' seemed to develop a life of its own via the Internet community and found myself becoming more and more stoked by the hoopla that surrounded it. As a result, I went in with high hopes …not that this would prove to be a great movie (I'm not quite that gullible), but more that it would prove to be equal to the gleefully excessive, giddy at the prospect, have-a-smile-on-my-face-throughout-the-whole-movie type of experience that I've had in the past with some other 'what in the hell were they thinking, but I sure am glad they thought of it' type films.

While I can't necessarily say that I was disappointed, I also can't say that it fully lived up to the expectations that I (and the Internet buzz) had set. While there were certainly examples of gleeful excessiveness, it wasn't quite the roller-coaster ride that I was hoping for. Truthfully though, I'm not sure that anything could live up to that degree of hype, so I'm keeping that in mind while writing this since, for the most part, I really did have a fun time with the movie.

I found the first part of the movie (before they get to the snakes and the plane and the hey-hey-hey) to be rather pedestrian. True, the filmmakers had to provide the set-up to explain how/why they had the snakes and the plane and the hey-hey-hey, but even so …The staging of these early scenes seemed like they could have come straight out of a mediocre 90's TV cop show (which is to say, rather forgettable), while some of Samuel L. Jackson's dialogue during this part of the film was written (and spoken) as if it could have been coming from the mouth of Robert Stack on 'The Untouchables' almost 50 years ago (which is to say, rather clichéd). Gratefully it didn't take a painfully long time to get to the snakes and the plane and the hey-hey-hey, but it seemed longer than I'm sure it really was.

But, once they did get to the snakes and the plane and the hey-hey-hey it turned into a fun little jaunt. True, pretty much all of the characters were rather two-dimensional (honestly, most of the snakes seemed to have more personality than the people did), but hey, if I was looking for an exploration of the complexity of the human psyche and inter-personal relationships from a film titled 'Snakes on a Plane', then I'm probably lacking some dimension myself.

Aspects/moments of the film that brought me (at least) borderline giddiness included:

Snake-cam (gotta love that snake's-eye view of things).

The afore-mentioned gleeful excessiveness that manifested itself by the fascinating tendency that the snakes had for latching on to some rather unmentionable (oh alright …I'm going to mention them) areas such as a nubile young lass's exposed nipple (hey, what's a plane-based movie without showing a comely young couple joining the Mile-High Club) and a gentleman's privates as he's relieving himself (and then having the snakes stay latched on to the afore-mentioned areas as if they were clinging for dear life to an E-Ticket thrill ride).

The fact that …well …some of the snake effects were pretty cheesy looking (which in the confines of a film like this, I was fine with!).

'The' line of dialogue …you know …the "Mother-f***in'" line from Samual L. Jackson that seems to have cropped up everywhere. While one line of dialogue does not a script make, that was the line I (and most of the theatre) were waiting for (since truthfully, most everything else that the characters said was pretty forgettable) …regardless, it brought a grin to my face.

So overall I had fun with it and will no doubt end up getting it when it comes out on DVD, but it didn’t quite deliver as much as I was hoping for. Oh well, at least there are two larger-than-normal crocodile movies coming out 2007. Perhaps those will fit the bill.