Snakes on a Plane, for those who missed the debacle, rose to dubious fame long before it was even released, when elements of the internet community heard the title and concept, (in this case, essentially the same thing), and decided to hype it up.  There followed some enthusiastic marketing – mostly from star Samuel L Jackson, who threatened to walk off the project if the title was changed – as the studio tried desperately to capitalise on the unexpected free publicity. 

That Snakes on a Plane proceeded to flop as badly as it did might be seen as a cautionary tale – perhaps against putting your faith in internet fanboys – but it’s hard to imagine it coming as much of a surprise to anybody but the producers.  Still, you’d be justified in expecting a certain amount of dumb B-movie fun from renting the DVD, right?  That title might not guarantee a good movie, but surely it should ensure a certain amount of cheap enjoyment.  With a moderate budget, enough at least for some decent special effects, with Jackson in the lead and a director experienced in schlock like Final Destination 2, how far wrong could things really go?

If those are stupid questions, it still comes as a slight shock to find that Snakes isn’t merely bad but, for the most part, excruciatingly horrible.  Even taking into account the last-minute reshoots to please fans, the suspicious change of director (from Ronny “Freddie Vs Jason” Yu, who might have been able to do something with this material), and the fact that Jackson is hardly discriminating with his scripts, there’s still no excuse for how futile and lousy it all is.  As petty as it seems to criticise a film that was pretty much sold on the promise of awfulness, Snakes on a Plane manages to be bad in such a heartless, dispiriting way that it’s hard not to be offended by it.

For a start, it doesn’t make sense on even the most basic levels.  You could write the plot on a stamp, (or sum it up in four words), and it still gapes with holes – and not only that, is so underdeveloped that there’s a whole tedious sub-plot that wastes time trying to rationalise it.  Jackson, who sold us this shit in the first place, proceeds to sleepwalk through it, and has the nerve to look faintly embarrassed.   The characters are offensively clichéd, and then the script-writers have the bare-faced arrogance to pretend they’re actually being clever – the obviously gay character, for example, turns out to be straight at the end, even though he’s spent the whole film cracking onto other men.  Having played for laughs for an entire hour, the script then expects us to empathise for the handful of staggeringly underdeveloped characters not already killed off in unimaginative ways.  The effects are unconvincing.  The snakes apparently have night-vision goggles on.  Even the token sex scene is just embarrassing.

I could go on, but you get the gist – Snakes on a Plane isn’t just bad, it’s bad in that particularly depressing way that only a lot of talentless Hollywood execs who think they’ve spotted the Next Big Thing can produce.  Throughout, it watches like exactly what it is, a movie based on a bad joke of a title, to please people who probably never had the least intention of actually paying to see it.  And that, as it turns out, is really the only one good thing about a film with a title that sums things up so perfectly – no-one needs to actually spend money to watch it.