Not the most clever of titles. See, the name of our hero is Vince... inVincible... it is a sport movie after all.

Most 30-year-old bartenders fulfill their athletic dreams by having children (preferrably boys) and pressuring them into sports. But since his naggy wife dumped him at the start of the movie, the kid angle is out. So he decides to do it himself by joining the Philadelphia Eagles. Never heard of them. But they do manage to win one game before the end of the movie... barely.

This has been a most unique movie-going experience. Read on...

I’m in the theater, waiting to watch one of the most anticipated movie of the year and I’m thinking to myself: why do people think this is a stupid premise for a movie?

I've seen snakes on plains many times, sounds mundane but not really that ridiculous. I assume these snakes are going to be highly venomous, which is undoubtedly going to add a fair amount of suspense and drama. The snakes on the plain back home were not venomous, although one of them bit me once, so evidently, *it* thought it was venomous... sorry, what?... "plane"?... as in "airplane"? That makes no sense! How are snakes going to get loose on a plane? That's just ridiculous!

Anyway… the movie’s starting.

People are cheering when the title appears and when Samuel L. Jackson's name appears. I expected that. The movie is a little slow to get going, there are a few exposition scenes that they need to show us before they can bring on the snakes. Normally, people talking during the movie would be a bad thing, but in this case, the spontaneous comments from the audience really helped get through this part.

Finally, we get to the good part. When the snakes eat through some wires, the pilot tells his co-pilot: “We’ve lost avionics! Take the controls and give me the manual”. Isn’t it a little late to start reading up on how the plane works?

That’s about the point where people start dying. The body count is quite impressive, I’m guessing at least 50. How many ways can you get snakes to bite people and not have it seem repetitive? You’d be surprised.

As if the movie itself wasn’t fun enough, the audience added to the experience. During one of the high tension moments, some guys started throwing rubber snakes at people’s necks, we had a good laugh at that. Until one guy got up, turned around and yelled: “Whoever’s throwing the snakes… that’s f***ing awesome!!!”. I’m liking this audience.

Back to the movie… Julianna Margulies bends over a trap door in the surprisingly roomy cockpit, a snake jumps out at her, and that’s when the most unexpected thing happened. The celluloid burned!!! It was perfectly done too, it started as a little spot in the middle of the picture, then it burnt out toward the edges, the “vertical hold” flickered and the sprocket holes streamed from the right. It looked exactly like it does when they fake it, but it was real. That’s never happened in the 1000+ movies I’ve seen, I didn’t think it was even possible in modern projectors.

While we waited for the film to be cut and re-fed into the projector, the audience fell into two camps. The first camp said: “I saw a plane, I saw snakes, I’m good. I’m leaving”. The other camp is best exemplified by a couple sitting nearby. When the guy suggested that they should leave, the girl said: “If we leave now, you’re gonna make me see it again to see the ending! We’re staying”.

I stayed, and I didn’t regret it. The movie restarts and we get more snakes, more testosterone, more plane clichés, it was just great.

Move over James Cameron, David R. Ellis is now my second favourite director (sorry, can’t bring myself to knock Luc Besson off the top spot). Ellis is unapologetic about giving the audience what they want. He’s not trying to make an artistic statement with his movies, he just finds what people want out of a particular movie and he gives them lots and lots of it.

Forget PotC2, SoaP is the best* movie of the year.

* For some definitions of “best”.

Vanilla Ice gets schooled by a balerina!
There's not much more I can say, really. Count your blessings.

There's this group of kids that have special abilities, there's the strong cute little girl wearing "protective" costumes, there's the angst-ridden invisible hunk, there's the attractive magnet girl (she can repulse too!) and there's the boy who can expand his body... hey! *I* have that power too!!! The growth is not quite as fast (and I'm still working on the shrinking part), but my body is definitely expanding.

But the most memorable performance of the movie is from Philip W. Purdy. Who is he? He's the boom operator. Toward the end of the movie, we see the boom at the top of the frame, twice. In a low-budget independent movie by a novice director, this would be forgiveable, but this is a Disney movie, those guys are supposed to be professionals. Even assuming that nobody noticed on the day of the shoot, I'm sure they could have done a little of CG there and replace the boom with a little bit of sky.