Soul Plane Review
by Laura Clifford (laura AT reelingreviews DOT com)June 1st, 2004
SOUL PLANE
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After getting his butt vacuum-sealed to an airplane toilet and watching his dog get sucked into the engine, Nashawn (Kevin Hart, "Along Came Polly") exercises his American right to sue and is awarded so much money he starts his own, specialized airline NWA with one purple "Soul Plane."
This horribly racist, unfunny attempt at an Africanized "Airplane" strains for the one laugh two large security women provide before even that joke literally goes down the toilet. The IMDB informs that director Jessy Terrero is the nephew of "Raising Victor Vargas'" grandmother, Altagracia Guzman. I can only hope she slapped him upside the head for this.
As Nashawn and his opportunistic cousin Muggsy (Method Man, "How High") prepare for the inauguration of their new commercial endeavor, the Hunkee (pronounced 'honky') family's return vacation flight is cancelled and they're rebooked on Soul Plane. Dad (Tom Arnold, "Cradle 2 the Grave"), teenaged daughter Heather (Arielle Kebbel) and girlfriend Barbara (Missi Pyle, "Big Fish") all gape at the Malcolm X terminal with its basketball court and 99 cent store while son Billy (Ryan Pinkston, "Bad Santa") adapts the look and lingo. Stewardesses with skirts barely skimming their behinds direct the Hunkee brood to 'low class,' and Captain Mack (Snoop Dogg, "Starsky & Hutch"), an ex-con whose only experience is with flight simulators, bounces the aerial equivalent of a low-rider down the runway. Mack succumbs to an overdose of magic mushrooms, his copilot Gaeman (Godfrey, "Johnson Family Vacation") knocks himself out getting out of the upper deck's hot tub and Nashawn must figure out how to land the plane and woo back his former girlfriend Giselle (K.D. Aubert, "Hollywood Homicide") who just happens to be on board.
Writers Bo Zenga and Chuck Wilson try to pass off vulgarity as humor (a blind man who thinks he is a player 'fingers' a baked potato on the seat next to him) and pile on so many black stereotypes that the only things missing are a watermelon eating contest and a minstrel show. While unintentional cruelty to animals can be made amusing (see "There's Something About Mary" or "Starsky & Hutch"), the intentional kind is just nasty. Naming a character Gaeman in order to trot out rancid gay jokes is at best uninspired and a gay steward is lazy cliche. Jeff Wallace's ("Swordfish") ugly, cheap looking art direction features a plane which looks constructed of cardboard without any attempt at spacial reality.
Watch for "Soul Plane's" appearance on score's of 'Worst Ten' lists come the end of the year. Snoop, what were you thinking?
D-
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