Snakes on a Plane 2006

Jen Chaney, Washington Post: Snakes on a Plane is pure escapist fun and absolutely nothing more. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Me, I liked Anaconda better. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: Snakes on a Plane is neither as good nor as bad as you'd hoped it would be: It's just a mediocre exploitation picture with an inspired premise. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: The plot is ridiculous and the characters are cardboard, but none of that really matters once the snakes get into the fuselage and start zapping people, the very definition of entertainment. Read more

Mark Rahner, Seattle Times: Rational people can agree on two things: Snakes are evil, and nobody swears more entertainingly than Samuel L. Jackson. Read more

Bob Longino, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Call me. I'll see it again with you this weekend. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: Snakes takes forever to get going... [and] once the mother****ing snakes get loose in the mother****ing plane, the film doesn't improve. Read more

Randy Cordova, Arizona Republic: The movie is aware of its cheesiness, one reason it works so well. It's an exploitation flick that knows what it wants to do, and it gets the job done expertly. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Jackson is The Man, and he bestrides this film with the authority of someone who knows the value of honest bilge. He's as much the auteur of this baby as the director and screenwriters, and that fierce glimmer in his eye is partly joy. Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: When 'fans' respond to an unabashedly silly title like Snakes on a Plane and start riffing on it, how seriously do they mean for their suggestions to be taken? Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: A staggeringly inane B-grade monster movie that doesn't pretend to be anything but a staggeringly inane B-grade monster movie and in fact so embraces its staggering B-grade inanity that it achieves a kind of elevated pop-cultural integrity. Read more

Michael Booth, Denver Post: Whether Snakes on a Plane means to be bad, or is just bad by being its own bad self, the truth is it's so bad that it's pretty good. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: It is a great cheeseball of silliness, a 'B' movie that has enough sense to embrace its 'B'-ness and then squeeze, like a boa constrictor. It is intentionally sublimely ridiculous from beginning to end. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: What, exactly, is the joke? If this cornball exploitation disaster movie had been called Anaconda 3: Flight of Fear (or, as was once planned, Pacific Air 121), we could all stop pretending that there was something exotically tacky about it. Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: Snakes was born dumb, but was then rendered ordinary. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Snakes is bad in a bland, calculated, marketing-is-all way, which is what you might expect from a movie that has been shaped around its marketing campaign from the jump (or from the slither, if you will). Read more

Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly: Chances are you'll be too giddy to think about anything other than a second helping. Tarantulas on a Train? Scorpions on a Sailboat perhaps? Fear not, the internet is already abuzz. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: Being as susceptible to over-the-top gratuitous absurdity as the next person, I had as good a time watching the movie as I did listening to the shrieking and hooting from the audience -- both to join in the fun and keep fears at bay. Read more

Lisa Rose, Newark Star-Ledger: There's a certain knee-jerk impulse to bash Snakes, just because of all the ridiculous buildup, but the film delivers on its promise of reptilian fun, with a camp mix of comedy, horror and suspense. Read more

Christy Lemire, NPR.org: This is an event. It's a rare example of a film not just living up to the hype, but surpassing it. And it's the best time you'll have at the movies all summer, if not all year. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: This Internet-promoted lark about a Hawaii-to-L.A. flight besieged by a frenzied tangle of snakes is hilariously funny, full of fang-popping scares, and guaranteed to increase travel by train. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Sick as it is, it captures more of the joy of movie-going than virtually any other summer movie this year. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Samuel L. Jackson is on record as saying this movie isn't for critics. He's right about that. The problem is, it's not for many other people, either. Unless they're stoned. Or drunk. Or just enjoy making fun of bad movies. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com: Snakes on a Plane could have been great, good-bad fun. All it had to do was live up to its name. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: If you can find a better time at the movies this year than this wild comic thriller, let me in on it. I'm there. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: There's no possibility it leaves unexplored. Snakes in a cockpit dashboard, snakes in a barf bag, in a runaway drink cart hurtling down the center aisle -- and that's saving the best reptile-in-an-unexpected-spot gags for your viewing pleasure. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times: Without that title and a year's worth of Internet-fueled buzz, this would be just another forgettable, mildly entertaining, mid-August throwaway movie. Read more

Stephen Cole, Globe and Mail: The first Internet joke ever made into a movie, Snakes on a Plane is just ridiculous and depraved enough to excite a cult following among high campers who are ready to enlist in a movie that gets one over on Hollywood. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: In short, Snakes on a Plane delivers exactly what it promised and then some. And how often can you say that about a movie these days? Read more

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: The director, David R. Ellis, is not exactly Alfred Hitchcock -- he's often messy in his stagings -- but as his picture rattles along its thrill a minute flight plan he does manage to induce a certain amnesia about its preposterous premise. Read more

Nigel Floyd, Time Out: The massaged script is now a little too knowing and calculated, nudging the audience in anticipation of each snake attack or corny gag. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: There is also something educational to be gleaned here: Snakes are not indigenous to Hawaii and they don't attack unless provoked. Read more

Justin Chang, Variety: Snakes on a Plane is at its best when it surrenders to the exuberant trashiness and matter-of-fact hilarity promised by its title. Read more

Jim Ridley, Village Voice: Like the flailing airline industry -- which probably sent executives out for ice packs when they heard the title -- it gives you the ride you paid for, and nothing extra. Read more