Snakes on a Plane? Snakes on a Plane! Snakes on a Plane!! Snakes on a Plane!!!

We took the whole family to this great film, Snakes on a Plane, tonight. We were a bit disappointed to find that it was 'X' rated, so we had to smuggle in the girls in a large holdall we keep for these occasions. We bought a large box of popcorn, rebranded as 'Snake Pellets' for the opening night, a huge bottle of 7-Up renamed 'Cobra Wee' and a box of six hot dogs relabelled 'Bits of Snakes in a Bun'.

The film was GREAT. Morgan Freeman reprises his role in 'In the Heat of the Night' as a cool black British copper hellbent on creating havoc wherever he goes just for the sheer hell of it, smuggling his huge collection of pet snakes onto Concorde, mainly down his trousers. Then as mums have to express milk in full view of aghast moslems, and little old ladies are grappled to the ground by lecherous and nervous security guards mistaking their zimmer frames for heat-seeking ground to air missiles, a chuckling Leonardo de Caprio, as Captain Ahab, trips over as he gets on the plane dropping three bottles of vodka. The scene is set.

As soon as Morgan gets on the plane, caressing his snakes and egging them on to sting people, the Fat Larry Band's theme song, 'Zoom', echoes around the plane. We just know there's trouble ahead!! The laughs come thick and fast as huge numbers of stereotyped passengers - two nuns and a priest, a pair of Siamese twins on a life support machine, Pete Townshend from The Who, a cheeky little chimp called Simon and a honeymoon couple (both men!) - jump out of the windows to escape the slithering serpents. Food gets spilled on the floor, sick bags are used as parachutes and the stewardesses perform a song-and-dance routine to a rather echoey version of Gary Glitter's 'D'you Wanna Be In My Gang?'

The crew get wind of trouble and fly really fast, avoiding mountains and skyscrapers as they try to land at an abandoned airfield in the Deep South, which is inhabited by zombies! As the passengers fall from the plane onto the grass airfield, a huge earthquake and tornado rip through the area, giving the special effects team a real showcase as snakes fly through the air and passengers seek cover under old pieces of farm machinery, with the Georgio Moroder soundtrack notching up the tension second by second. Some of the women scream and run their fingers through their hair, the men stand square-jawed into the wind challenging Mother Nature to do her best as they quote from the Bible.

A super film with a lethal mix of planes, snakes and disposable Americans, and a wonderfully twisted ending (it was all a dream!) which I won't spoil by revealing here.

Snakes on a Plane - snaketastic!