UNIVERSAL REMOTE
There are three reasons I go the see a movie in the theater instead of waiting for it to come out on video: First, I want to see it while everyone is taking about it. Next, I want to see it on the big screen. And last, I want to see it with an audience. These criteria hold true for about 99% of all the movies I go to. Snakes on a Planeis different. It is included in that rarefied 1% of releases where my least important reason to go to the theater becomes the most important. Movies like this are all about audience participation, which is precisely why I chose to go see it in Times Square. I tend to avoid 42nd street multiplexes because of their notoriously outspoken crowds. But for Snakes on a Plane, these people, whom I normally scorn, become my cheering, screaming, hooting fellow connoisseurs of cheese.
The fun started as soon as I got to my seat. By wearing my
original, internet-purchased bootleg T-shirt, I was letting everyone know that I was into this one. I wasn't alone. When I saw the folks behind me had rubber snakes wrapped around their necks, I knew they were fellow travellers. As soon as the lights dimmed, cheers erupted. A raucous chant of "SNAKES! SNAKES! SNAKES! SNAKES!" filled the auditorium and didn't quiet until the fist preview was already over. My brother was "ssssssss"-ing the whole time.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm 'ssssssss'-ing," he said. "Like a snake."
"Stop that. No one can hear you over the cheering."
Then the cheering died down and I realized many, many other people were also "ssssssss"-ing.
"See?" he said.
Now the entire theater was "ssssssss"-ing.
"Oh."
As readers of Daily411 know, I have been looking forward to
Snakes on a Plane ever since I
heard the premise. Maybe "looking forward to" is the wrong way to put it. Perhaps "giddy" is more appropriate. Or "foaming at the mouth." Like most early
SoaPers, I was immediately attracted to the So Stupid It's Great concept. And casting Samuel L. Jackson gave it some respectability. (Not a lot, but a little.) But I must admit, my enthusiasm for
Snakes had started to wane. For some reason, it seemed funnier when less people knew about it. Now it was a phenomenon and I actually considered bagging the whole thing. I rationalized this thinking by deluding myself into thinking I knew exactly what the experience of seeing the actual movie would be like. Why bother going?, I asked myself. You got the shirt, you blogged a few posts about it, now put it to bed and wait for something more exciting to come along. But now, with an entire theater "ssssssss"-ing around me, I realized that I was wrong. It was different actually being here. It was different like watching a baseball game in person is different than watching it on TV. It was different like going to a concert is different that listening to your iPod. The act of Being There changes everything because it forces you to use all of your senses all at the same time.
My deepest hope was that
Snakes on a Plane would be less a Bad/Good movie and more a Good Movie Disguised as a Bad Movie. What is the difference, you ask? A Bad/Good movie is a movie so bad you actually like it.
Showgirls is a good example. So is
Road House and
The Color of Night and
Commando or anything starring an early
Steven Seagal. But no matter how much affection you may have for these movies, you must always acknowledge they are bad. That is part of their charm.
A Good Movie Disguised as a Bad Movie is something entirely different. It is a movie that looks like a bad movie but is actually a lot smarter than people give it credit for.
Deep Blue Sea is a great example. So is
Starship Troopers. Any movie that would kill off its biggest star just as he is finishing his
Rallying The Troops monologue is a Good Movie. Any movie that casts Doogie Howser and a bunch of
90210-lookalikes and places them in the middle of a Giant-Bugs-As-Metaphor-For-Fascism storyline is a Great movie. I once had a fight with an co-worker about
Starship. Voices were raised. Tensions simmered long afterwards. And no matter what he says, I will argue 'til the End of Days that
Starship Troopers is one of the great satires in movie history.
So how was
Snakes on a Plane? I think it was somewhere in the middle. It did a good job of establishing stereotypical stock characters and then having them do something that we don't necessarily expect or see coming. It gave the bimbo a lapdog named "Mary Kate." It gave said dog a terrible, surprising, hilarious death. It had pretty good jokes about who you’d rather have suck the venom out of your wounds. When Samuel L. Jackson discovered the snakes were being driven into a frenzy by pheromone-laced leis, it had him extol: “Great. Snakes on crack.” When a couple of tight-bodied mile-high club wannabes are attacked in the bathroom, the snake doesn't just attack, it latched firmly onto her silicone-enhanced breast. You were going to see some crazy deaths in this one, we were being told. And we did. One guy got it in the penis while taking a leak, another got it in the eye. A fat woman had a snake go up her muumuu while she slept. A kid got it. A cat got it. Anything and everything on the plane got it.
But it also got awfully repetitive. It didn’t really come up with a clever way to up the stakes. It never had Jackson have to outsmart a cobra or trick a python. I think they could have had more fun with material as ridiculous as this. As
Jeffrey Wells said, “Samuel L. Jackson should have had gotten into a last-minute wrestling match with the big anaconda and then blown a hole in the side of the plane and the snake had gotten sucked out. The camera could have followed it all the way down and watched it splatter on the deck of a cruise ship.” He’s right. This kind of thinking would have taken the movie to different level; the level of Good Movie Disguised as a Bad Movie. Alas, it will forever be known as a Good/Bad Movie.
So I agree with
Darlucky; it was not a great movie. But it was an indisputably great time at the movies. The only comparable experience I’ve had is when I went to see the re-release of the original
Star Wars. Then as now, there was the added energy created by the audience's shared affection for the material. The difference now was that the audience had already bonded over a movie none of us had ever seen. At
Star Wars, we cheered the stuff we loved and had all seen a dozen times. For
Snakes, we were cheering about stuff we had all read about on the internet. And none more so that the infamous “I’m tired of these motherf@#king snakes on this motherf@#king plane!” line; you couldn’t even hear the end of it over the roar of the crowd.
Unfortunately, if you are interested in
Snakes on a Plane, you may have already missed your best opportunity. It requires not just a large crowd but an enthusiastic one. Alcohol is probably a good idea too. Based on the lackluster box office numbers, I doubt anyone is going to be encountering any sell-out shows from here on out. (And we probably won't get any of the funny knock-offs I was looking forward to.
Grizzy Bears on a Cruise Ship, anyone?) But I may be wrong. So get your butt to Times Square, or wherever the noisiest, rudest, most popcorn-throwingest crowds in your area go, and see this motherf@#king movie.
