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Category:    Home > Reviews > Comedy > Soul Plane (Uncut)

Soul Plane (Uncut/Mile High Edition)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: C-     Film: C-

 

 

Hollywood loves Comedies, because all they have to do is make you laugh, yet can still be about nothing and have no real narrative.  Of course, many of the better ones do have enough structure to keep things going.  When Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker did Airplane! In 1980, they were spoofing a trend of disaster films that began with Airport 10 years earlier.  Soul Plane (2004) is nearly a quarter-century later after the spoof, and an additional decade after the trend that inspired it, and this is the main problem with the film.

 

The film is trying to sell itself as a “Black version” of Airplane! and even can claim a now-infamous moment of that older film is “politically incorrect” in a scene where two African-American men are talking in such a confined-to-black-culture way that their conversation needs to be subtitled.  Instead of taking advantage of that opening, Soul Plane has constant run-ons of such moments using slang and terms coined to Hip-Hop throughout with no ironic distance.  Furthermore, the Bo Zenga/Chuck Wilson screenplay has more bad single-entendres about race and sex than anything since Nancy Walker’s Can’t Stop The Music (1980, like Airplane!), but even that was a better film.  Besides being an often-outrageous Musical, it was actually funnier and better directed.

 

Jessy Terrero helms this film and is clueless on how to make this material take off.  Tom Arnold, who has been in a strange twilight zone situation since True Lies (1994), as to whether he is an actor, TV personality, tabloid subject, or outspoken commentator on non-film, TV and music subjects.  This tinges any of his film appearances with an unfunny feel, no matter his character actor talents.  Here, he heads the lone white family who has to go the Malcolm X terminal of NWA Airlines (yawn!) and see his family become the minority.  Kevin Hart is the head of the airline, which he built form money won in a case against another airline.  Method Man and Snoop Dog fail to give the film any credibility, as they do nothing to overcome the script.  Mo’Nique has the best moments, as usual.  D. L. Hughley is not given enough to do.  Missi Pyle is wasted as Arnold’s wife and their family has one of the most racist names in recent film.  Pyle has proved how funny she could be in Josie & The Pussycats, Bringing Down The House and even Along Came Polly, as bad as that was.  Like Mo’Nique, she was not given the material up to her abilities.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is nothing special and Jonathan Sela’s cinematography has a plastic repetition that does not bring any of the would-be visual gags to life.  Video Red is mixed.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 AC-3 mix is best when Hip Hop plays, but shows its low-budget origins throughout otherwise.  Even The Rza, who did such a good job on the music for Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, cannot save this picture.  Extras include outtakes, deleted scenes, two featurettes, a photo gallery, trailers for several MGM titles including this one, a “Survivor Safety Video”, a behind-the-scenes photo gallery, and a cast audio commentary that is just plain odd to listen to.  They had more fun than most viewers.

 

So what could have actually been a franchise falls flat very quickly.  If any word could best describe as condescending throughout and anyone watching who thinks otherwise is being suckered.  The film died a quick death at the box office and will be lucky to become a cult time on DVD.  The other thing that struck me was the lack of energy in the film, especially problematic since Hip Hop is supposed to be the dominant music genre right now.  With so many of its major stars retiring early, so much of the genre becoming clichéd and having practically no political power left, are we in the midst of some seismic musical change?  Soul Plane could be more than just a wrong flight, it could be marking the end of something much more significant and not know it.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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