After giving the world one of the greatest automotive pileups in all of cinematic history with Final Destination 2, who better than director David Ellis to make a piece of pure escapist B-movie schlock? Sadly, it seems as if not everyone completed all their coursework in the Ed Wood School of Filmmaking, leading to a barrage of detractors who apparently can’t take the joke that is Snakes on a Plane.
I will not beleaguer the plot for it is posited in the true spirit of the proceedings, that is, arbitrarily. In order to make a film with 450 snakes on an airplane, the filmmakers contrive the thinnest of premises, a witness (Nathan Phillips) to a murder at the hands of a crime boss (Byron Lawson) is put into protective custody and placed aboard a plane en route to Los Angeles in order to testify. But, as I’ve stated, this is pure fodder in order to arrive at the titular action of the film.
Now, many reviewers–despite the fact that they acknowledge that the concept behind the work is to make nothing of value–persist in decrying that Samuel L. Jackson’s role isn’t as pithy as they would have liked (implying that, since he was using the word “motherfucker” once again, they wanted him to revisit his role as Jules in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction), that Ellis’s work doesn’t readily flow, and that if you know anything about snakes, airplanes, or anything for that matter, that S.O.A.P.’s incongruities nearly suffocate the film. However, this is to miss the point.
Snakes on a Plane readily exhibits a true appreciation and understanding of what comprises a B-movie. Unfortunately, many of the aforementioned critics failed to step far enough away in order to see the whole of the forest, opting instead for a couple of paces back and, consequentially, a lovely view of, not one, but a handful of trees.
No, S.O.A.P. is not a comedy, a horror flick, or a thriller, but rather a very poor conglomeration of all of the above as Ellis masterfully missteps every other moment (to consistently lapse would be to readily exhibit control and exacting execution–i.e. Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks!) as he cleverly presents a film devoid of a decent storyline, convincing characterization, consist editing, realistic dialogue, or even plausibility. However, he remains mindful that most storytellers who get carried away with the “making” rather than the “making of” a film still manage to fashion an entertaining product, albeit at the sacrifice of what separates escapism from art. Isn’t Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space, Coleman Francis’s The Beast of Yucca Flats, and Joseph Green’s The Brain that Wouldn’t Die enjoyable in lieu of all of their cinematic atrocities (or, better yet, for them)? Who cares if it is at the expense of the film itself considering the name of the game is pure, escapist fun? If one were to delve into the philosophy of B-movie appreciation, the person might well find this question to be of utmost relevance, which is exactly what Ellis does throughout S.O.A.P.
This being said, we watch as character development briefly appears, yet in a minor figure and for the duration of only once scene, after the slithering antagonists attack the exhibitors of the cardinal sins of lust and pride only to continue their killing unabated and without any other pointed philosophic purpose. In this regard, the technical inconsistencies which blatantly present themselves throughout the feature compound the hyperactive irrationality of the whole, making for directed B-movie chaos.
How can anyone entertain the notion that a director with a huge backing (ergo, a thousand set of looming, financially concerned, eyes) could miss a circular staircase which miraculously straightens itself during the feature, wounds which jump from appendage to appendage, and drawings originally done in pencil inexplicably appearing in color? How can anyone reasonably state that they were upset at the fact that Ellis introduces a kick boxer (Terry Chen) who never provides any action-filled moves? And, yes, the dog shouldn’t die, but that’s solely reserved for “proper” Hollywood. However, even though the knowing nod was apparently lost on some, at least Jackson acknowledged and accepted the film for what it is in that, after his livid agent insisted that his client couldn’t possibly be involved in a production with such a ludicrous title, the actor objected, stating that the title was the exact reason he took the role. Perhaps it’s the fact that Ellis, like Stanley Kubrick and Dr. Strangelove, made his actors play it straight in order to compound the absurdity–lest the knowing grimace allot for those involved being in an the gag–that upset some viewers (thereby implying that the acting was so good in its restraint that such critics took the performances literally).
In an era in which it is protocol for production companies to demand a PG-13 rating for films which house R-rated plots, the powers-that-be insisted that David Ellis shoot additional, more explicit scenes for Snakes on a Plane in order to up the rating ante, which should signal that S.O.A.P. is not playing by the rules. What can be said for a film which meticulously plots its badness, so much so that a calculated misanthropy reigns at the end when the body count tallies in at 29/31, snakes’ favor, and contains a scene in which one character, out of the kindness of his heart, volunteers to suck another’s ass?
-Egregious Gurnow
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