Tanya Batson-Savage, Freelance Writer

Kenan Thompson as Troy tries to disentangle himself from dangerous reptiles in 'Snakes On A Plane'. - Contributed

The name of the flick, Snakes on a Plane, says it all. There are snakes on a plane. There are big snakes on a plane, little snakes on a plane, short snakes and long snakes, snakes of all colours - all on a plane. The creators make no attempt to even come up with a good title, they just describe what it is about and let that work how it should.

Even at a time when baby formula has become a dangerous substance in air travel, snakes on a plane still rank among the very strongest stuff. Interestingly, it might not make the thought of air travel seem any scarier than it can be right now (whether you are one of those people always randomly selected by security, or one of those people deathly scared of the randomly selected).

Adequately directed

The flick is adequately directed by David R. Ellis and (to use the term very loosely, as no real writing was involved) written by John Heffernan and Sebastian Gutierrez. Heffernan and Gutierrez do not even really bother with a cohesive plot, but they do have an anaconda. Though the flick has slipped into the horror genre it is far more fun than scary, especially as the snakes have a penchant to bite people in the most private places.

The flick was clearly created in a brainstorming session which ended with something like 'you think terrorists are scary? Forget terrorists - now snakes, that's scary'. And there ended the plot.

Veers from tradition

The flick stars Samuel L. Jackson and a crate full of very aggressive and very deadly snakes. Jackson plays FBI agent Neville Flynn, whose job is to protect an eyewitness, Sean Jones (played by Nathan Phillips). However, mobster Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson) apparently wants to veer away from the bomb tradition and decides instead to fill the plane with snakes.

This flick carries the kind of role that makes one want to weep for Samuel L. Jackson. He really has no business in this clearly B-rated, good for guilty pleasure (if you like encounters of the reptilian kind) type of movie. Yet, somehow, he keeps accepting these roles and, though he still handles them well, they are getting tiresome. Jackson's performance is the only thing that makes the barely sketched character, Agent Flynn, remotely tolerable.

The characters in the flick (with the exception of the snakes) are not very interesting and most of them are clearly only there to get killed. Of course, that becomes a part of the fun of the movie, as one can select from boarding who will get bitten first and as the flick sticks with the monster-movie formula, it isn't hard to select them.

As such, while the suggestion that profiling should be a legitimate way of dealing with terrorism in the air is a far scarier idea, snakes on a plane does bring some slithering fun. The movie is named, after all, Snakes on a Plane, and that says it all.

No plot.

No characterisation.

Just snakes.