Ladies and Gentlemen, Snakes on a Plane

Since it’s only opened this weekend, I don’t want to give away too much of the SoaP plot or action, so I’ll just say this — obviously, with a title like Snakes on a Plane and Samuel L. Jackson in the lead role, this movie had Spectorqular written all over that. It was going to get 3-4 cubes without even trying.

But where director David Ellis really takes it to the next level is with his attention to detail. Every action/thriller movie cliche character is involved in some way; if they could have only worked in the Asian actor from Lethal Weapon (the one who electroshock tortures Mel), this movie would play like a perfect tribute to the last 30 years of movie spectorqularity.

The movie’s self-awareness of its own spectorqularity does threaten the fun on occasion — a couple lines of dialogue are a bit too “wink-wink, we’re in on the joke”. But those momentary lapses are always quickly compensated for with a heaping dose of CGI snakes. That’s right people — virtually every snake in the movie is CGI. And that alone, when coupled with the reasons enumerated above, gives Snakes the ultimate in spectorqularity — 5 cubes.