Review: 'Snakes on a Plane'

Aug. 18, 2006 — -- It's the best movie title I've ever heard: "Snakes on a Plane."

You hear the words, your stomach muscles start to contract, the adrenalin starts to flow.

It won't be the summer's biggest movie, but it is -- at least by its audience -- absolutely the most anticipated.

If you haven't heard Samuel L. Jackson shouting, "I want these motherf--g snakes off this motherf--g plane," it means two things.

You're old enough to vote or you haven't Googled "Snakes on a Plane," and logged on to one of the more than 20 million mentions.

Bloggers wrote that line, and they posted parodies on YouTube.com like "Cats on a Plane."

There was some controversy over whether the studio would change the name to "Pacific Air 121."

That's exciting, but that's not what the studio really wanted.

Anyway, Jackson wouldn't let them.

"I signed up to do 'Snakes on a Plane,'" he said to them, "and that's the movie I'm going to do."

The blogging, the books and the buzz have been going on for a year. All this for a movie nobody had seen.

The first screening was Thursday night at 10, and I was there.

I think I was the only critic in the joint, and here's my one-word review: AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

The parts I saw was a much better movie than I thought I was going to see.

Jackson plays an FBI agent escorting a key witness in a murder trial from Hawaii to Los Angeles. How does the bad guy keep the witness from testifying?

Four little words: snakes on a plane.

Much less a gorefest than most contemporary horror films, the film plays like a suspense thriller gone wacko -- a thrill ride that's a whole lot of silliness and even more fun.

I won't tell you what the snakes do, the places they come out of, or the places they bite people, but more than one of those bites ensured the film would be R-rated.

Think "Airplane" meets that scene in the pit from "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

Virtually all the articles I read about "Snakes on a Plane," written by people who hadn't seen it, used the adjective, "cheesy."

Not true.

This is a good-looking film, and Jackson is just so much fun to watch. The other horror films that are out there?

This one's a slither above them all. Grade: B