Zub Tales

Saw Snakes on a Plane last night.

It’s a great film to watch with a big and bosterous audience. Home video viewing will take the wind out of this thing’s sails like nothing else. Campy and ridiculous with a good blend of set-up and action, I had quite a bit of fun. The crowd yelled commentary and laughed or yelled at the appropriate parts, ramping up the amusement. I had a blast.

Is it a “good” film? Hell, no.

The core premise of the whole thing, that the bad guys would go to the trouble of getting a huge time-release box filled with hundreds of rare and hard-to-gather snakes on a plane compared to using those same resources to just get a big bomb on board, is completely ridiculous and mind-numbingly stupid.

Does it make for a fun B-movie worthy conflict? Yuppers.

The film advertised itself as a fun film and delivers on that level. Nothing more and nothing less.

Well worth checking out if you can bring a group of friends and turn your brain off at the door.

When the film has a great opening weekend, Hollywood types will misinterpret this as a trend shift and dump tons of crappy knock-offs at us. They NEVER understand innovation, a good idea in the right time and place and the simple theory that a good story and good production will lead to a solid box office performance. They’re 100% convinced that there’s a magic formula which doesn’t involve creative talent at all… that there’s a profit switch they can just turn on if they can just follow a popular film and beat it into the ground. It’s not that Pixar makes solid films, it must be that 3D animation is hot, hot, hot! It’s not that Spider-Man was a faithful adaption of one of the most popular characters in the world, it’s the power of comic-based movies! It’s not that Snakes on a Plane has caught lightning in a bottle, it’s that internet involvement/hype and b-movie badness is the next big thing!

PS: I’m not saying Snakes is a good story… I was talking more of broader trends. Snakes definitely falls in the “right time and place” category.