By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
SNAKES ON A PLANE: Shoutbacks Reviewed
Now is the time to submit your eyewitness reports of SNAKES ON A PLANE’s opening night screenings. The audience shoutbacks. The shootings. Anything else you might notice.
Which publication will be first with the hater headline SNAKES BITE”?
And which fake populist critic will shill himself into the blurb whore pantheon with a line like, “who’d have thought a thrill ride about cold-blooded reptiles would turn out to be such a warm hearted, winsome surprise!” or “The plain truth? Snakes On A Plane is Hisssss-terrical!”
Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek doesn’t feel the snake love, but does give the impression that the first-night Times Square screening was the place to be. “When we became restless after too many trailers, a soft hissing noise filled the theater, a boo that was actually a cheer. Time to bring on the motherfucking snakes!” She continues: “While “Snakes on a Plane” barely stands up as a movie, it definitely qualifies as an event. A fellow critic present at the same showing said that afterward, he couldn’t quite tell if the crowd actually liked the picture. But everyone sure liked being there.”
Everyone but Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman, who seems decidedly creeped out by the mob mentality in that very same theatre. Smack! We have a winner. “Snakes on a Plane sounds like a title that Don Simpson, at 4 in the morning, scrawled in white powder on a glass table.”
Finally, because somebody’s got to take umbrage at something in every film, spare a moment for the reaction of a snake expert who points out that “snakes on crack” — or pheremones — would be more interested in loving than biting. This same herpetologist also takes umbrage at the film’s portrayal of the “bald, geeky” snake expert. “We don’t like to think we’re nerds,” sniffed the snake scientist, who wears his long flowing gray hair in a ponytail.
The next time I’m on an ill-fated flight upon which killer snakes escape and go amok, and one of the snakes kills me by chomping down on my bare bosom while I — like an idiot — am complaining about the flight attendants or (even better) I’m applying for membership in the Mile High Club, I demand that at least one eyewitness notice, semi off the record, “Nice rack, you know–which makes thisa real tragedy,” and that my grieving survivors claim,: “It’s how she would have wanted to go.”
