Emperor's clothes

Snakes on a Plane is like one of those Kevin Smith movies where you're not particularly thrilled to be coughing up your precious $9.50 to see it, and once you've walked out of the theater you are terribly unsure about how you feel about it because there's only 10 minutes of brilliant stuff to go with 130 minutes of filler, but like everyone else you don't want to be left out on a good internet meme, so for a couple weeks before opening night you shut everyone up in the room whenever the trailer comes on TV to feign excitement, and you all of a sudden have designated "motherfuckin'" as your new favorite adjective.

Remember back in the late 90s when Chris Rock had one really great act, and then for a couple years following that it seemed that he could get an entire room to crumble onto the floor laughing, simply by clearing his throat? It was atrocious. When Lethal Weapon 4 came out several years ago and I was in the theater watching it with a couple buddies and Rock did some lame joke about rotary telephones, my friends roared hysterically in laughter, while I just sat there thinking, Uhh... I want to laugh so bad -- but it's not really funny. Well, that's how I feel about Snakes on a Plane. The title's fun, great. An absurd premise of snakes attacking airplane passengers and Samuel L. Jackson playing it straight as an FBI agent, great. A nod to B-movies, great.

But come on, let's get over this movie. It was amusing and serviceable, but not worth changing your MySpace theme over, and definitely not worthy of the hype that it has accumulated in the past year.

It's amazing how people brainwash themselves to be ecstatic over something so marginally interesting, just to be in on the joke.

Not that I'm free of guilt in the least bit. Leaving the theater last night, somewhat disappointed that there had only been about 18 people scattered in the auditorium with me instead of a packed house of rowdy movie-quoting geeks, I still wondered if there was anyone else I could triumphantly text "snakes on a plane!" on my cell phone to. Of course, this was after wondering if, at that point, buying one of those cute SoaP t-shirts (to sport as my badge of pride) would be out of style -- kind of like the September 2000 equivalent of wearing one of those "Make 7 Up Yours" t-shirts.