so bad it's good

Saw a little movie called Snakes on a Plane last night. Perhaps you've heard of it. It's what the kids are into these days.

Snakes on a Plane is a brilliant allegory for contemporary America. Samuel L. Jackson's steely-eyed and determined character does what needs to be done. He speaks plainly, and without flourish. He approaches the menace of the snakes (on a plane) with a moral certitude and clarity of purpose that can remind us of no one but our own President, piloting the 747 of state to safety. The terrorist snakes are relentless in their violence. They cannot be appeased. They hate our freedom, damn it!

Just kidding. SOAP, however, is extremely awesome. It is a prime example of how anything worth doing is worth doing fully, completely, and without apology. In this case, making an over-the-top campy B horror flick. The cliched characters and situations are set up and knocked down like pins in a bowling alley, one right after the other. Very satisfying. The dialog is awful. The violence is cartoonish. The few attempts at character development are so awkward that it simply has to be intentional. Samuel L. Jackson actually yells, "I am tired of these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!"

Seriously--it's hillarious. I haven't had this much fun at the movies in a really, really long time. Probably not since the South Park movie came out. My only regret is that we saw an uncrowded matinee--we should have gotten tanked and seen it on opening night, in a theater full of people yelling at the screen. That would have been perfect.

On a related note, there's a great post and discussion over at Hairshirt today on the appreciation of truly shitty movies.