We had to wait until the end of summer 2006 for this great popcorn movie. A blend of old and new, Snakes on a Plane delivers what all the hype preceding its release promised: lots of chills, thrills, tributes, and special effects, and very little to think about.

The old part is that Snakes on a Plane seems straight out of the 1970s. It might have been called Airport 10: Flight of Terror. As everyone prepares to board the plane, all the stock characters of disaster films are introduced: a stewardess making her last flight before retiring, a honeymooning couple returning from a blissful time in Hawaii and poised to live happily ever after, two cute little boys making the trip without an adult companion, a rap star who won’t let anyone touch him for fear of contamination, a foxy and half-crazy woman with a Chihuahua in her purse, a seemingly fey airline attendant who becomes a hero when the snakes bare their fangs, and an FBI officer who can handle anything that slithers against him. The only thing missing is Sally Field as the Flying (by ticket this time) Nun.

Before the boarding scenes, another cliché sets things in motion. A badass Asian gangster, Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson), commits a murder that is witnessed by a surfer guy (Nathan Phillips). The surfer, convinced by the FBI to show up as a witness against Eddie, is being escorted back to the US mainland by FBI agent Neville Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson). Being the slime that he is, Eddie has arranged to place dozens of lethal snakes in the plane’s cargo bay, the snakes to be released by a timer once the plane is in flight. Eddie hopes the witness will go down with the rest of the flight.

The snakes are released as planned, and it’s quite a mix: rattlers, cobras, coral snakes, asps, boa constrictors -- critters that don’t normally cohabit in the same part of the globe. They’re all digital, and if next March there’s a new Academy Award category for Best Digital Snakes, they should win it, scales down. These snakes have personality and bite. They don’t look real, but they don’t look cartoonish either. They seem to be creatures conjured from a very bad nightmare, or perhaps an all-week drunk.

Once released, the snakes start to pick off the passengers one by one, often in very unpleasant, repugnantly funny ways. Anyone who knows anything about snakes knows that they don’t normally attack unless provoked. Eddie and his bad guys have thought of this and dosed them with pheromones that make them go crazy, which provides Jackson with the movie’s best line: "Well, that’s good news: snakes on crack!"

That, at least, is new -- I’ve never seen a disaster movie set in the air that involved snakes -- and plays against and with cliché in uneasy yet almost comedic ways. And did I mention that the plane is in the middle of a storm that it can’t seem to fly out of, that the pilot has been bitten and dies, and that a citizen hero whose only flight experience has been a simulator in a game arcade ends up landing the wounded plane?

Jackson is authoritative in his commando role, displaying the utmost cool. If I’m ever on a plane (or boat or train) with that many snakes, I hope he’s aboard. The rest of the cast is ideal. The quick cutting and scary sound effects keep the mind off the fact that the snakes aren’t real. Trevor Rabin’s adrenaline-pumping music score is the crowning touch of terror.

When I left the theater, all I could think was, "Wow, that was cool." No popcorn movie could receive a better review. Check the intellectual part of your brain at the door and enjoy the flight.

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