Pun Salad

Surprisingly enough, this movie is not about shrews on a bus, nor does it concern carp on a train, not even moose on a velocipede. No, it's snakes on a plane. And that's not referring to a Euclidean plane either, Mister Smart Guy.

No, the bad guys put crazed snakes on a jet plane to eliminate a witness against a mobster. Because they (the snakes) are cold-blooded, and therefore undetectable by normal airport security. Otherwise, they would have gone with peeved meerkats instead, and then we'd have a totally different movie.

Ahem. When you're in midcoast Maine on a rainy Sunday afternoon, you take what you can get. Despite all the hype, this was a movie I was perfectly prepared to wait forever to see.

And it does turn out to be funny in spots and creepy-scary in spots, but it's ludicrous and predictable all the way through. Dumb fun, with emphasis on dumb. (Exercise for the reader who's seen three or more Hollywood movies in this genre: predict who's going to live and who's going to die among the characters as they are introduced. I guarantee you'll be at least 80% right.)

Samuel L. Jackson is a force of nature, however, and he's pretty fun to watch. It's also good to see Todd Louiso, but mainly because I start remembering all the better stuff he's appeared in.