"Snakes on a Plane" is many things. A great summer catch phrase. A possible lyric in a future Alanis Morissette song ("It's like snay-ee-akes, on a pla-a-ane ..."). A potentially big step toward the total elimination of the creative middleman in mainstream entertainment. A high school prank perpetrated on a mass scale.
By now, everybody has heard the story about how the title got a lot of early attention online, which naturally led to riffing, which led an excited New Line to shoot additional scenes in order to integrate fans' suggestions. So, Samuel L. Jackson dutifully bellows the now official refrain of the summer, "I've had it with these %#@*&{circ}% snakes on this %#@*&{circ}% plane!" near the end of the movie, and other latter additions are clearly identifiable. There's a scene in which a horny couple gets it on in the bathroom. (Snake on a mammary.) A scene in which a urinating man gets a nasty surprise. (Snake on a vas deferens.) A scene in which a snake crawls up the wrong end of a comically overweight lady. (Snake in a bottom.) Snakes, at least the snakes in this movie, love all manner of human orifices. They will plunge right through your eyeball if given half the chance.
The snakes on this plane are also very media savvy, and it's quite possible they've attended a Robert McKee screenwriting seminar or two. They attack strictly according to the rules of Hollywood. They kill the mean, anti-American British businessman but spare the hot madonna and child. They let the two sexy stewardesses live but kill the unattractive-but-noble one. (Snakes on a Shelley Winters character.) Progressive of them, they don't kill a black man, though they do bite one in the butt. (He declines venom extraction from an ambiguously gay steward.) They bite a kid named Tommy, but it's just a nibble.
The movie begins in Hawaii, where a surfer dude named Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips) accidentally witnesses the brutal murder of a Los Angeles prosecutor by a vicious mobster named Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson). Sean is rescued from reprisal by agent Nelville Flynn (Jackson) and is flown to L.A. to serve as a witness. ("Last week, I was planning a surfing trip to Bali," Sean says. "But now you make it sound like I got no choices!") That's correct, son, and soon you'll have even fewer choices because Kim has managed to smuggle a huge crate full of poisonous snakes into the cargo hold (which should not be construed by the public as permission to pack the tweezers).
