“Sit back. Relax. Enjoy the fright.” Synopsis: An FBI agent takes on a plane full of deadly and venomous snakes, deliberately released to kill a witness being flown from Honolulu to Los Angeles to testify against a mob boss.

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Calamity Brains:

You’ve got to hand it to the twisted minds that came up with this film: Snakes on a Plane is both a completely ridiculous premise, yet somehow manages to present a concerning problem. Because really, if you’re trapped in the sky in a metal tube over water, what exactly DO you do about a bunch of hyper-aggressive, venomous snakes? Pray, I guess.

If you’ve been living under a rock, you may be unaware of Samuel L. Jackson‘s presence in this movie, his fantastic one-liner, and the glorious TV edit of that line. (But I hope not.) He plays an FBI agent opposite flight attendant Julianna Margulies and witness Nathan Phillips – and pilot David Koechner, who plays, well, the same character he always plays. All of the actors are at least passable, and there’s usually enough going on in any given scene that mediocre acting isn’t distracting.

The plot is, naturally, quite silly. Most of the attempts to deal with the snakes sans weapons are also pretty silly. MacGyver would be proud of the problem-solving (such as it is) on that plane. But even those aboard the plane who are supposedly trained for emergencies made some thoroughly questionable choices. For example: the plane loses one pilot fairly early on, and then no one stays to help the other pilot/keep snakes off him? At the very least, the flight attendants should have had some kind of plan in place to serve as his backup. But I guess I might be asking a little much from a movie called “Snakes on a Plane.”

What else can I say? This utterly ridiculous cinematic schlockfest is pretty entertaining. It’s not as fun as it could have been, but between the premise and Samuel L. Jackson, it’s worth the watch. Add in a gleefully bad theme song, and you’ve practically got a masterpiece.

Calamity Brains’ Rating: C+
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