Mad Mad Media Podcast

Featuring music by: Taylor Hollingswort, Duct Taped Heart; Carbonfour, From The Start; Karmella’s Game, One Phone Call; Pippa Rogers, Happy; Panic At The Disco with I Write Sins Not Tragedies

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Snakes On A Plane: The Review

Ah, the action movie. A dying art if you ask me. Fifteen years ago a new action movie was coming out every couple of weeks, with Jean-Claude Van Damme or Dolph Lundgren battling aliens, renegade cops, mobsters or each other. None of these movies were any good, but they were usually fun to watch.I was reminded of those cinematic achievements last night as I sat through the 7 p.m. showing of Snakes On A Plane, a movie about a doomed red-eye flight from Hawaii to LAX carrying a witness to a mob killing, 50 people who under any normal circumstance wouldn’t commingle with each other, and a baggage compartment filled with poisonous snakes.The film followed very closely to the rules of the action genre.First Rule: Introduce your heroes and victims. The heroes in an action movie are introduced with a memorable one-liner. In this case, Sean (an extreme sports junkie played by Nathan Phillips) is sitting in his apartment hours after he witnessed a mob hit. He hears someone at the door and runs to the porch where special agent Nelville Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson) grabs him and says ‘Do as I say and you live.’ The hero is introduced.The victims are introduced as they come on the plane (which is filled with poisonous snakes waiting to pounce). There’s the pompous jerk who’s ticked he has to sit between a woman with a dog and a woman with a screaming baby. He’s gonna die. There’s the guy who hates to fly, with his wife who chose to go to Hawaii for their honeymoon. Oh, yeah. They’re gonna die. There’s the stewardess who passed up early retirement. Dead. There’s the pilot and co-pilot who have to fly the plane. Dead.There’s the promiscuous couple that head off to the bathroom to smoke some dope and join the mile high club. Drugs and sex? They’re gonna be the first to die! The plane takes off, the snakes are released, and all hell breaks loose. Second Rule: The villain has to be virtually infallible and improbable. In Universal Soldier, the Unisols (who where genetically altered dead soldiers from the Vietnam War) were unstoppable. In I Come In Peace, the alien from another planet that shot compact discs from a gun could not be beat. In this case they had snakes that were riled up from pheromones sprayed on the leis.Third Rule: Everybody has to be put in an inescapable situation that will take sacrifice and impromptu teamwork to overcome. With there being a plane full of snakes, that pretty much takes care of rule #3. Fourth Rule: There has to be one catch phrase that will be screamed out by everyone in the theater after the movie ends. That phrase is: “I’ve had it with these mother (something) snakes on my mother (something) plane).” Check.For the most part, Snakes On A Plane is an enjoyable ride. The snakes are scary, the action scenes qualify as being nail biting, there is some great comic relief (much of which is provided by SNL’s Kennan Thompson) and, of course, Samuel L. Jackson says “I’ve had it with these mother (something) snakes on my mother (something) plane). And the group of people I saw it with really liked to scream when they saw the snakes. That was sooooo cool. But after the sugar high of SOAP wore off this morning, I do have some complaints. The dialogue was extremely clunky, filmmakers didn’t take full advantage of a large snake, none of the characters were developed to a point where you gave a damn about anyone and Samuel L. Jackson’s catchphrase seemed tacked on. In fact, if Samuel L. Jackson wasn’t attached to this film, it probably would have been direct to DVD, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, and every single person in the video store would have picked it up, read the description and thought to themselves (boy, this sounds good but I’ll wait until it’s a dollar rental).I’m glad I got caught up in the late summer frenzy of Snakes On A Plane, I’m glad I saw it opening weekend with friends, and I’m glad someone has the guts to make an action movie at a time when gross-out comedies have worn out their welcome and Jerry Bruckheimer seems to be controlling the action genre with high-budget, high-concept, low-payoff films. Snakes On A Plane is a refreshing alternative to the norm. Now, let’s work on bringing Jean-Claude Van Damme back to the big screen. 

Mad Mad Media: Snakes on the Media

Mad Mad Media Host Eric LaRose is joined by Sam Castro for a discussion on Snakes on a Plane. Featuring music by The Sounds, The Academy Is, Midtown, Gym Class Heroes and Cobra Starship. madmadmedia.blogspot.com

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