Snakes are just plane dull

The story is simple, formulaic and dumb. A surfer dude (blandly played by a nonentity called Nathan Phillips) witnesses a murder committed in Hawaii by an oriental drugs baron (Byron Lawson, melodramatically-evil) and is being flown to Los Angeles in the company of two FBI men, one of them disposable, the other our hero (Samuel L Jackson, playing his dreary role with an intensity it never begins to deserve).

While they travel first-class, the rest of the passengers fly coach, much to the annoyance of an obnoxious British businessman - yes, Hollywood has gone back to bashing the Brits, and this specimen perishes in especially unpleasant circumstances (though markedly similar to the ones that attended Jon Voight's demise in Anaconda).

On the instructions of the drugs baron, a consignment of deadly snakes is released - and not a minute too soon - to bring havoc to the airplane.

It's better not to ponder the unlikelihood of inadequately packaged venomous serpents being transported on a passenger airline, or of the FBI not checking the hold when they are transporting a key witness against whom murder attempts have already been made.

Nor shall I dwell on the improbability of a master criminal employing such an expensive and haphazard method of killing a single witness.

It's also advisable not to count the number of opportunities bungled by the film-makers. Why have a kickboxer on board and then not have him kickbox a snake into submission?

Why have a planeful of Hawaiian leis (those floral boas) around passengers' necks and not have somebody accidentally replace one with a snake?

Why establish a panicky, germophobic rapper, the closest thing to an original character in the entire picture, and then have him abruptly change into a nice guy in mid-flight?

The movie looks as though it was made by a committee, most of whom weren't on speaking terms, and none of whom had a single original idea in their heads.

The snakes attack the passengers in an entirely predictable order, based on the kind of fat-headed morality that traditionally pervades slasher-films.

A young couple wishing to smoke a joint and join the mile-high club in the airplane lavatory are first to go, complete of course with sleazy, lingering shots of the girl's bare breasts. A cocky man is bitten on the - do I really need to spell this out?

An ugly, obese woman with a drink problem has a snake give her sexual pleasure down below, only for it to then to launch itself into her right eye-socket.

Get the idea? If your idea of a great time is sadistic voyeurism, don't let me stand in your way. The trouble is that within ten minutes of snakes on a plane slithering amok, they have done just about everything that snakes on a plane can do; and the movie's not even half over.

So we get more and more of the same, and then some more, and finally a shock ending which might just surprise anyone who's never previously been to the cinema.

Director David R. Ellis made two reasonably inventive genre movies in Cellular and Final Destination 2, but proves here that he's just another Hollywood hack, even obligingly going back to shoot extra scenes involving more gore, verbal obscenities and gratuitous nudity when 'fans' of Snakes On A Plane demanded them on the internet.

This raises the interesting question: can one really be a 'fan' of something that doesn't exist yet? Apparently one can, in the brain-dead new world of the internet era, where it's considered hip to be stupid and clever to be easily led.

Snakes On A Plane
Cert: 15