Snakes on a Plane

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

Snakes was the most exuberantly trashy delight of this summer movie season or last.

Premiere Jessica Letkemann

Why is this movie so watchable? Four simple reasons. It's truly funny. It's truly scary. It's truly gruesome. And Samuel L. Jackson is the cool head who prevails (“You stick with me, you live”).

Boston Globe Ty Burr

A movie called Snakes on a Plane had better be one of two things: So bad it's good or so good it's great. Darned if it isn't a little bit of both.

New York Post Kyle Smith

The film failed to be frightening, suspenseful or dramatic but accidentally succeeded in being absolutely hilarious.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Looming large over all this is Jackson, who glowers and growls and acts the hero better than any actor out there.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

If you can find a better time at the movies this year than this wild comic thriller, let me in on it.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Hilariously funny, full of fang-popping scares, and guaranteed to increase travel by train.

Dallas Observer Jim Ridley

There's something almost refreshingly venal about a movie with no purpose other than to meet intentions this cheesy.

Slate Dana Stevens

Who knows whether Snakes will have--forgive me--legs, but it's more than awesome enough to assure opening-weekend euphoria.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

This is a coolly efficient, tongue-in-cheek horror-comedy.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

What they give us is the chance to win, not with righteous morality, but with an old-fashioned swagger that says, much like the film itself, Hey, we may be stupid, but we rock.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

To be sure, Snakes on a Plane is going to inspire some highly readable graduate-school film theses. You may even want to re-enroll to pen one yourself.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole

There is also a capable, wisecracking stewardess (Julianna Margulies) and, what a surprise, a steward who appears to be doing a Paul Lynde impersonation.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

To an extent, Snakes on a Plane reminds me of "Eight Legged Freaks." It has the same kind of off-the-wall, don't-take-it-seriously comedic horror sensibility.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Cheesy, campy B-movie fun, thanks mostly to the cadre of cobras and their ilk and also to Jackson (probably the only actor alive who could pull off this save-the-day bad ass movie role).

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

1. It has the potential to supplant "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" as the greatest audience participation movie of all time. 2. It is, simultaneously, one of the worst and best movies I’ve ever seen.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

While Snakes on a Plane barely stands up as a movie, it definitely qualifies as an event.

Variety Justin Chang

Snakes on a Plane is exactly the sort of tasteless, utterly depraved, no-nonsense sluts-and-guts extravaganza it was meant to be.

Empire Kim Newman

It’s the sort of picture you'll either queue all night in the rain to see twelve times or avoid like a Wayans Brothers Retrospective for the rest of life.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

More potent than anything in Snakes on a Plane is the fantasy offscreen: that if enough people talk up their desire to see this film and, at the same time, take an overt delight in what an unabashed piece of junk it is, they will fuse with the hype, with the movie's mystique. They will not just watch Snakes on a Plane; they will own it.

Philadelphia Inquirer David Hiltbrand

This hotly anticipated film delivers on the premise of its celebrated title. But it offers little more in terms of suspense, originality or enjoyment. Mostly, it lays there on the screen like a big lazy boa.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

The plot is ridiculous and the characters are cardboard, but none of that really matters once the snakes get into the cabin and start zapping people, the very definition of entertainment.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

The result is not quite a horror movie (too cheerful and can-do) or a thriller (too cheerful and stupid), nor does it parody itself or take itself seriously, thereby canceling out the camp factor. It's more like an improv sketch at 30,000 feet.

The New Yorker David Denby

The audience decided to sell Snakes to itself, and that became the event--the actual movie could never have been more than another exploitation picture.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Snakes on a Plane represents a fairly craven mixture of deliberate cheese and inadvertent lameness, plus fangs.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Nothing at all special. It's one more cheesy, broadly played, poorly paced, instantly forgettable August action movie.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The whole enterprise has the sweaty sheen that comes from trying too hard to be cool.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The movie's highest level of artistic expression was the ingenious Internet campaign that catapulted it to culture phenom months before it even opened. The thing itself turns out to be pretty much an afterthought, cheesy and not very well worked out.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Neither as good nor as bad as you'd hoped it would be: It's just a mediocre exploitation picture with an inspired premise (succinctly spelled out by its title), loads of gratuitous gore, a dash of equally gratuitous nudity and enough inanities to make you wonder if Ed Wood rose from the grave to serve as a creative consultant on the project.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

It's not so bad that it's good. It's so bland that it's boring. Not even worth a hissss.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Not since Pet Rocks riveted the nation have so many gotten so excited over so little.