So, there I was, sitting by myself doing something I very rarely do, going by myself to see a movie on opening weekend, and feeling a little silly seeing this adolescent-boy geek movie by myself, sans buddies.

If there’s one thing I’ve always felt like I’ve had enough of for the last few decades, it’s male geek friends. Yet, there I was, all by my lonesome to see Snakes on a Plane. Well, all by myself except for the tiny two-shot size bottle of Baradi I’d snuck in with me. European films from the 1970’s pretty much require large amounts of coffee, and, similarly, exploitation films from any era are never hurt by a small amount of alcohol.

The theater wasn’t exactly jam packed, so I had a fairly prime seat, when a young women came in and asked if I could move over so two other people could join her. No problem…though I began to get alarmed when she started using her cell phone during a trailer to check on the status of her popcorn. I became more alarmed when one of the other the popcorn bearers turned out to be her son, probably about eight or nine years old, sitting right next to me, and clearly a little frightened to be seeing the movie.

I tried to ignore this, but then, once the movie started and the kid said “oh my God” at each of the many instances of mild-to-moderate sexual innuendo, I knew I was in trouble. Well, one virtue of being by yourself is that you can easily get up and change seats. Fortunately, I was gone before the semi-inevitable “mile high club,” snake-on-a-boob, snake-on-a-crotch, and snake-in-an-eye moments.

But folks, is there anything that be done about the idiots who take their kids to see this kind of movie? And Snakes is hardly the most inappropriate I’ve seen kids at.

I’m not saying that at least more mature kids over, say, 10 or so, should never be taken to R-rated films, but parents should have some limits. How’s this for a rule of thumb: If you’re child is not mature enough to hear a mild breast joke without saying “oh my God,” he’s probably not mature to see most R-rated movies. And if he’s says he’s scared to see the movie and you’re still dragging him into the theater then you are not mature enough to have kids.

****

What about the movie? Good natured B-movies may be a dying breed, but they are not entirely dead yet. And real men movie stars in the tradition of John Wayne and Lee Marvin are not entirely an extinct breed as long as Samuel L. Jackson walks amonst us. The Airport movies — with which Snakes on a Plane definitely shares some DNA — could have used the man.

Not that Jackson doesn’t get some help. It’s a wittily cast film strong on comic relief. Along with Kenan Thompson’s as comical-yet-sensible video game loving rapper’s bodyguard, it’s a pleasure to see David Koechner, the swaggering cowboy-hatted sportcaster Champ Kind from Anchorman
as the similarly confident-without-much-cause pilot.
Still, there’s no doubt who’s in charge. Just in the way the desecrated rug pulled the Dude’s room together in The Big Lebowski, Jackson’s presence pulls the freakin’ thing together and turns what might have been a just acceptable thriller into a genuine good time. I’m not saying it’s a great movie. I’m not even sure it’s a good one but — slightly lame CGI snakes notwithstanding, this is the Snakes on a Plane that I wanted to see.

Of course, not everyone gets the classic exploitation film aesthetic that Snakes embodies, and the film’s grosses were about fifty percent short of (inflated) expectations. I’m guessing that for the time being the idea of marketing major motion pictures predominantly via the Internet is pretty much over.

It worked better for Snakes than it did for the other experiment in fan-based, Internet-driven viral film marketing, Serenity, but unlike that so legendarily difficult to sell film, it also beneffited from a major star and the most impossible to misunderstand premise since The Forty Year-Old Virgin. It still failed to make more than $20 million. The money guys won’t like that.
Nevertheless, the Snakes on a Blog guy was happy to be able to write a cheerful post about going to the premiere, but didn’t get to shake hands with Mr. Jackson. I guess it takes at least a $40 million opening weekend before a blogger gets that honor.

But since when is a tongue-in-cheek exploitation animal attack film supposed to make that kind of money anyway? Roger Corman would have known better than that.