Monday, June 6, 2011

Lock Me Up!: Snakes on a Train

How can you make a joke out of a joke?  Snakes on a Plane is not a film meant to be taken seriously.  How can a film with 'monkey-fighting snakes' on a 'Monday to Friday' plane be serious?  Oh yeah, the microwave also has a 'snake setting' on it to boot!  So what is this film about?  It involves a curse put on a woman causing her to constantly have snakes come out of her.  Say it with me folks- eww.  There's also no Samuel L. Jackson character, so no luck for you Charlie Murphy!  Are your hopes at the properly-low level?  Well, let me tell you that there is a great moment to see...at the very end.  Wait it for me, since I have to fill my space quota.  Hide your children as we do battle with the...
Hey, do you like context for anything?  If so, you'll hate this movie.  They spend the first thirty minutes not telling you what's going on with the snakes, the woman or this medicine man.  All we know is that they board a train after being confronted by a bunch of thugs and...the terrorist guy from The 9/11 Commission Report! Why are you here?  Why are you supposed to be Hispanic now?!?  During this time, we also meet a bunch of random characters on the train.  Boring.
As time goes by, the movie manages to fill itself up with lots of random sub-plots.  That's a substitute for an actual plot!  Here's a couple to tide you over...
* A Sheriff exploits sex from a woman smuggling drugs, but turns out to be a fake.
* A pair of strangers hit it off.
* A couple with a young kid try to enjoy the trip.  Here's how that one wraps up...
Things start to get real when things start to get full of CG crap!  The doctor continues to try and stop the curse affecting the woman, but it does no good.  The thugs from earlier have their sub-plot resolve when they get infected by the curse and die.  The woman's infection gets even worse and she turns into a killer snake woman.  It gets even more even worse causing her to turn into a CG snake and grow gigantic...
By use of a magical pendant (which was around for the whole movie, but never did anything until now), this happens...
Yeah, that just happened!  Try to explain it, audience.  The End.
I'm not laughing!  The plot of this movie is just awful and barely-explained.  Remember the whole thing about how there's a curse on the lady?  Well, they don't even explain that until about 40 minutes in or so.  Good storytelling, guys!  Thankfully, the people over at Netflix will help you out by telling you this major plot point on the sleeve that the movie is shipped in.  Seriously, what the hell?!?  It's not a twist when you just refuse to say anything.  As far as the rest of the plot goes, it's pretty bad.  Most of the stuff you see is kind of dull (the strangers' plot or the family one) and the rest is just poorly-handled.  The whole 'I'm a cop who does bad things, only I'm not really' thing just comes the hell out of nowhere.  The point of it- to have the characters just shoot each other to death.  Did the Writer just want to make the 'Dear Sister' joke into a plot, but couldn't make it fill 80 minutes?  WHY IS THIS HERE?!?  To be honest with you, the film is not that interesting.  If you want to laugh, watch this clip.  Of course, I maintain that some of you may disagree.  Take us away, repeat casting gone awry...
Next up, The Asylum takes on Eragon with a film entirely unrelated to it.  Way to pick a hit, guys!  Stay tuned...

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