It would be easy to write Snakes on a Plane off as a bad movie. The plot is ridiculous and ill-conceived. The dialogue is laughably contrived. Character development is not even attempted. After all, who needs character development when every character is already a cliché—the rapper, the princess with the lap dog, the terrified flier, the unaccompanied minor, the single mother and the uptight British guy? In sum, to call Snakes on a Plane an objectively bad movie would no doubt be an accurate assessment, but still a completely misguided one.

Snakes on a Plane is sui generis. I can’t recall another movie which has ever been so uniquely in on itself. To understand how SOAP deserves its own genre, consider two movie franchises: Scary Movie and Final Destination. The Scary Movie series is the collection of sometimes funny, usually stupid spoofs of horror films. It bills itself as a comedy. Final Destination, with the idea that one cannot escape death as its premise, bills itself as a horror movie but is probably unintentionally funnier than any of the Scary Movie films. It’s difficult not to laugh at the absurdity of someone getting crushed by a falling sheet of glass.

Snakes on a Plane is not a parody or a spoof by any means, so it’s not Scary Movie 5, yet it asks you to laugh at it. SOAP and Final Destination achieve the same result, but Snakes is in on the joke. This is clear from the somewhat unnerving simplicity of the title as well as the tagline: “Sit back. Relax. Enjoy the fright.” New Line actually flirted with changing the name of the movie to Pacific Air 121 until hordes of fans objected and Samuel L. Jackson, who plays the hero, threatened to quit the film. New Line acquiesced and has since encouraged the perception of Snakes as a movie worth seeing on the merit of its ludicrousness. In Jackson’s own words in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, “It's just a ridiculous fucking concept that's exciting,” and “Snakes on a Plane doesn't speak volumes about shit.”

Jackson’s right. The movie is not after any Oscars. Thus, the success of SOAP must be measured by its ability to entertain. And the truth is, it’s hard not to be entertained when cobras latch onto various genitalia or when Samuel L. Jackson shouts obscenities at snakes and proceeds to kill them with his rotating arsenal of flame-thrower, taser, fire extinguisher, and, of course, harpoon (Jackson’s character is nothing if not resourceful). Admittedly, I spent much of the movie marveling at the film’s stupidity, but that’s the point. Most people who go to see Snakes and know what to expect—mindless action and over-the-top stunts—will leave the theater satisfied.

With the tremendous hype surrounding Snakes, studios will be tempted to try to replicate the film’s formula of deliberate absurdity for laughs without explicitly admitting as much. They should be warned that it won’t work. There’s two big reasons the Snakes formula worked and wasn’t laughed out of the box office. The first is that this is the first time it’s been done. Audiences will quickly tire of repeated attempts at Snakes’ success. The second is Samuel L. Jackson. Without him, SOAP probably fails. Jackson has become a sort of cultural icon with a cult-like following—a role which he has cultivated since his celebrated portrayal of a bible-thumping hit-man in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. To put it simply, everyone loves to see Samuel L. Jackson cuss and kick ass.

Snakes on a Plane is probably a one-time thing, a kind of cinematic phenomenon in its success through stupidity. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it.

Star rating: * * *