Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I don't know how they did it. I am honestly surprised to say that SNAKES ON A PLANE is as fun as we all want it to be. How could the film possibly live up to the hype? I was certain... absolutely certain that the flick would be all wink-wink/comedy and get real old real fast. The scenario in my mind of Samuel L. Jackson facing off against a shitload of venomous snakes on a muthafuckin' plane would certainly be better than anything David Ellis could show me, right? Especially since they were forced to shoot for a PG-13 and only late in the game did they decide to go back and do a week's worth of reshoots to pepper in the stuff we all wanted to see. I could see the flick going from PG-13 fare to a few sequences of the good, gory stuff.

I can't for the life of me imagine what this film looked like in its PG-13 form, but I can thank all the movie gods that I'll never see it.

With all the word of mouth screenings pulled, with the back and forth PG-13/R stuff, the name change and change back... With all the build-up, expectations... How the hell did this movie end up being the movie I wanted to see?

One, Sam Jackson is as good as you expect him to be. That was one area I knew I wasn't going to be disappointed. He's been in some shit, but his very personality is always fascinating to watch. But the supporting cast, the other characters on the plane, are also fun to watch.

Sure, a lot of the characters are painted in broad strokes, the rich white asshole lowering himself to sit in coach, the rapper, his two fat body guards, the dog lady, the fat woman, the stewardess on her last flight, the sexist pilot, the random kick-boxing champion, the kids flying alone, the Latina mother with a newborn baby, the sexy couple, the guy who's afraid of flying... All represented, but other than the first two to get it, I actually sort of empathized with them.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the characterizations were deep and complex, but they were much more realized than I expected. I thought Sam Jackson, his witness he has to protect and maybe one other character would be built up for more than just a fang-cushion for the creepy crawlies.

The movie actually surprised me. There's a snake incident involving a toilet that had me clapping... there was a snake incident that was grotesquely sexual involving an overweight woman in a mumu. Some of the people that got nailed surprised me. Some that survived surprised me. As strange as it is to say, the writers were pretty clever with their character set-up. Some were structured in a way that should have equaled death, others were structured in a way that should have equaled survival, but they switched up a bit on me.

The movie doesn't totally take itself seriously, but it wasn't a parody either. This isn't AIRPLANE with snakes, although some drunk assholes in the audience seemed to think every single line uttered in the film was meant to be funny. There's actually a pretty sweet moment between two of the flight attendants that I didn't expect, but Giggles McGee next to me thought it was all supposed to be so hy-lar-eous.

How does a film make me like Kenan Thomspon? How is David Koechner not totally wasted as the pilot? How did Julianna Margulies bring a grounded realism to the main stewardess in a film called SNAKES ON A PLANE? How did the "snake on a tit" scene live up to Sam Jackson's description of it? How did this movie work? How many times will I end up seeing it?

Granted, I did see it with an Alamo Drafthouse audience of geeks that were primed to see it, including my little brother who was wearing a SNAKES ON A MUTHAFUCKIN' PLANE t-shirt with Sam Jackson's head on it. My audience shouted along with The Man when he uttered his already famous, "I'm tired of these Muthafuckin' Snakes on this Muthafuckin' Plane!" line, then gave it a standing ovation. The cheers when the title, SNAKES ON A PLANE, came onscreen were thunderous enough to shake the table. That might not be everybody's experience with it, but it was mine.

I plan on seeing this flick a few more times theatrically and if it holds up beyond the first Alamo experience it will hold a place of honor on my DVD shelf. What do you folks think of it?

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com