Review: Snakes on a Plane

Meh.

I really liked the idea of Snakes on a Plane, especially after reading this famous blog post. I loved the idea of Sam Jackson in the movie. I loved the way the title is able to encapsulate everything about the film. The actual experience of the film left me flat. I'm told that many people find dating to be like this.

Maybe it's because I'm old. Maybe it's because I haven't seen enough horror films that I'm desensitized enough to have found some of the scenes funny. Maybe it's because I saw it in a largely empty theater in the company of three fifteen year old boys. Maybe it just wasn't a very good movie - it seemed to me that the movie battled (and lost) the whole three hours (what, it was only 100 minutes long?) to find a consistent tone.

LARS friend Jamesey felt differently, but then he's young enough to have been asked to show ID at the theater. (As further proof, the comments on his post contain Trogdor references). But

I loved this take from the literary site The Valve, "A Pre-Reading of 'Snakes on a Plane'". It begins (just begins!):

Though I myself haven’t seen the film, it is almost impossible not to think that Lacan had watched Snakes on a Plane, because his conception of alterity is so closely aligned with the film's revolutionary mise en scene. Indeed, my reading below is deeply invested in resisting the tired old “grand narrative” of “actually watching the film,” which essentializes “experience,” and delegitimates the kinds of liberatory theoretical praxis I have memorably justified elsewhere.

Go read the whole thing here.