I was looking at all the unsold copies in the store today. I wonder how many more days before it goes onto the discount "please take these off of our hands!" section.
So tempting... It's weighing between this and eating, right now. I think this was the most fun I've ever had in a movie theater, watching it. The audience squirmed and shrieked at the right moments, cackled at the right/wrong moments, and was generally kick-ass.
Snakes on a Plane: MST3K fodder if EVER there was a movie destined for it!
At 30,000 feet the external temperature of the airplane is about -47F... all you have to do to deal with the snakes is OPEN THE DAMN EMERGENCY HATCH and let everyone use their damn breathers! Cold-blooded critters do NOT work and play well when they are SNAKE-CICLES!!!
Can you tell I used to work in a herpetology lab, milking "hots" (poisonous snakes) back in college (for all of about four weeks, that is)?
Leve it to Hollywood to do another really stupid, high-concept, mucho-special-effects, formulaic piece of nonsense and NOT listen to their technical advisers.
"A Burmese python EATS a human adult male?!" What was the guy, a freaking MUNCHKIN?! And the snake starved to the point of near extinction because he eats the guy AFTER he eats the lady's DOG?!
I mean, there's suspension of disbelief and then there's having it snap back and hit you in the face so hard that your head hits the guy in the seat behind you...!
This film falls (plummets, more like!) into the latter category with a nasal-crushing "THUD!"
But Mace Windoo trying to cope with all the bad lines IS pretty entertaining... in the trailer reel, anyway...
As a herpetologist myself, I'm glad they made it so damn cheesy it can't possibly be mistaken for anything resembling reality. Saves a lot of effort in re-educating the masses. ;)
I think things like the cottonmouth scene in Lonesome Dove was much more "damaging", trying to pass off utter fantasy as realistic.
Okay, for the record, this is why I didn't bother seeing "Snakes on a Plane" in the theatres and sure won't buy/rent the DVD.
The real grindhouse films, most of the ones that MST3K made fun of, were made by people who really wanted to entertain. Maybe, like Ed Wood, they weren't that good at it, but that was where their hearts were at. And there's a lot of those unrequited lovers...check out either of the "Psychotronic" reference books for a good list of them.
"Snakes on a Plane" was made purely for profit. There was no one on that production that really wanted to do a disaster film, or to do a film with Samuel L. Jackson, whose career arc is heading earthward fairly fast. They wanted your money, period. They wanted your money so bad that they created internet hype to try to get you to fork over $10 to see it in the theatre. There was literally so little content and love in that film that it evaporated the second the film was taken out of its cans.
And if you didn't want to pay $10 to see it in a theatre, they sure as hell want you to pay $24 to have it stinking up your DVD shelf forever. No thanks.
Now, my friend Ms. Geek insists that it's a fun parody of the Irwin Allen disaster films. That's making fun of something that was originally a parody, or "pooping on top of poop" as Triumph would put it. She said that you just had to have lowered expectations when you walked in the theatre. Given the life and the shifts that I work, I don't think my expectations can limbo that low.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 11:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-02 11:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-03 01:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-03 12:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-03 05:44 pm (UTC)*kick!*
-=ShoEboX=-
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-03 12:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-03 12:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-03 09:20 am (UTC)At 30,000 feet the external temperature of the airplane is about -47F... all you have to do to deal with the snakes is OPEN THE DAMN EMERGENCY HATCH and let everyone use their damn breathers! Cold-blooded critters do NOT work and play well when they are SNAKE-CICLES!!!
Can you tell I used to work in a herpetology lab, milking "hots" (poisonous snakes) back in college (for all of about four weeks, that is)?
Leve it to Hollywood to do another really stupid, high-concept, mucho-special-effects, formulaic piece of nonsense and NOT listen to their technical advisers.
"A Burmese python EATS a human adult male?!" What was the guy, a freaking MUNCHKIN?! And the snake starved to the point of near extinction because he eats the guy AFTER he eats the lady's DOG?!
I mean, there's suspension of disbelief and then there's having it snap back and hit you in the face so hard that your head hits the guy in the seat behind you...!
This film falls (plummets, more like!) into the latter category with a nasal-crushing "THUD!"
But Mace Windoo trying to cope with all the bad lines IS pretty entertaining... in the trailer reel, anyway...
I wanna see the BLOOPER reel for this bad boy!
Lee
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-03 02:53 pm (UTC)I think things like the cottonmouth scene in Lonesome Dove was much more "damaging", trying to pass off utter fantasy as realistic.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-04 11:40 am (UTC)The real grindhouse films, most of the ones that MST3K made fun of, were made by people who really wanted to entertain. Maybe, like Ed Wood, they weren't that good at it, but that was where their hearts were at. And there's a lot of those unrequited lovers...check out either of the "Psychotronic" reference books for a good list of them.
"Snakes on a Plane" was made purely for profit. There was no one on that production that really wanted to do a disaster film, or to do a film with Samuel L. Jackson, whose career arc is heading earthward fairly fast. They wanted your money, period. They wanted your money so bad that they created internet hype to try to get you to fork over $10 to see it in the theatre. There was literally so little content and love in that film that it evaporated the second the film was taken out of its cans.
And if you didn't want to pay $10 to see it in a theatre, they sure as hell want you to pay $24 to have it stinking up your DVD shelf forever. No thanks.
Now, my friend Ms. Geek insists that it's a fun parody of the Irwin Allen disaster films. That's making fun of something that was originally a parody, or "pooping on top of poop" as Triumph would put it. She said that you just had to have lowered expectations when you walked in the theatre. Given the life and the shifts that I work, I don't think my expectations can limbo that low.