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Soul Plane
Review by Jon Waterman
1/2 star
Plane lover and aspiring businessman, Nashawn, sues an airline company after a disastrous flight leaves him emotionally scarred. In return for his suffering, Nashawn is awarded $100 million. Whatever shall he do with all that money? Start his own airline, what else? He’s going to do things his way from now on…assuming he and the crew survive the maiden voyage.
The film started off strong. The credit sequence looked nice. The prologue worked well and was shot very effectively. But then they started to add jokes. The style of humor is a less surreal “Airplane” or “Naked Gun.” There are a lot of improbable situations and sight gags, plenty of puns, some physical and sexual humor and a sky full of fish-out-of-water wackiness. Here’s the catch: Very little of it is funny. The gags are slightly clever, but it tries so hard to make everything a laugh riot, that the film crashes before leaving the ground.
To make matters worse, the movie will most likely offend a lot of people. It does nothing more than perpetuate many stereotypes of all races represented (black, white, Hispanic, Arab). All the dumb jokes that they feel make fun of and in a way reinforce the individuality of a culture instead serve to reinforce boundaries between cultures. It could have been worse. Luckily, nowhere is a black person shown to be a violent gangbanger. In fact, I was pretty pleased with how interracial interaction was presented (mostly). Despite the cheap joke of the Middle Eastern fellow being treated like a terrorist, and despite the aforementioned boundaries, white and black people interact with each other as individuals (with no mention of skin color) and not as people from two different worlds. Overall, I still think it does slightly more harm than good.
Now, I love going to bad movies. Sometimes, there’s nothing better than watching something that you think will be horrible and laughing at it with your friends. “Soul Plane” had all the ingredients right there: A stupid plot, goofy white people in a hip-hop setting, comedy, and a bunch of virtual no names trying to hit the big time (although there are a lot of big name African American stars and comedians laced throughout, my guess is the majority of the country have never heard of anyone other than Snoop Dogg, D.L. Hughley, Tom Arnold or Method Man – none of which are known for their acting prowess). Yet, instead of eliciting intentional or unintentional laughs, the movie produced open-mouthed disgust. This movie is bad. It’s not even bad in a good way. It’s awful and boring and dumb. If I were you, I wouldn’t waste the time.
Soul Plane
Review by Jon Waterman
1/2 star
Plane lover and aspiring businessman, Nashawn, sues an airline company after a disastrous flight leaves him emotionally scarred. In return for his suffering, Nashawn is awarded $100 million. Whatever shall he do with all that money? Start his own airline, what else? He’s going to do things his way from now on…assuming he and the crew survive the maiden voyage.
The film started off strong. The credit sequence looked nice. The prologue worked well and was shot very effectively. But then they started to add jokes. The style of humor is a less surreal “Airplane” or “Naked Gun.” There are a lot of improbable situations and sight gags, plenty of puns, some physical and sexual humor and a sky full of fish-out-of-water wackiness. Here’s the catch: Very little of it is funny. The gags are slightly clever, but it tries so hard to make everything a laugh riot, that the film crashes before leaving the ground.
To make matters worse, the movie will most likely offend a lot of people. It does nothing more than perpetuate many stereotypes of all races represented (black, white, Hispanic, Arab). All the dumb jokes that they feel make fun of and in a way reinforce the individuality of a culture instead serve to reinforce boundaries between cultures. It could have been worse. Luckily, nowhere is a black person shown to be a violent gangbanger. In fact, I was pretty pleased with how interracial interaction was presented (mostly). Despite the cheap joke of the Middle Eastern fellow being treated like a terrorist, and despite the aforementioned boundaries, white and black people interact with each other as individuals (with no mention of skin color) and not as people from two different worlds. Overall, I still think it does slightly more harm than good.
Now, I love going to bad movies. Sometimes, there’s nothing better than watching something that you think will be horrible and laughing at it with your friends. “Soul Plane” had all the ingredients right there: A stupid plot, goofy white people in a hip-hop setting, comedy, and a bunch of virtual no names trying to hit the big time (although there are a lot of big name African American stars and comedians laced throughout, my guess is the majority of the country have never heard of anyone other than Snoop Dogg, D.L. Hughley, Tom Arnold or Method Man – none of which are known for their acting prowess). Yet, instead of eliciting intentional or unintentional laughs, the movie produced open-mouthed disgust. This movie is bad. It’s not even bad in a good way. It’s awful and boring and dumb. If I were you, I wouldn’t waste the time.
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