'Soul Plane' fails to get off ground
Most of this film could be flushed down the toilet.
By ROGER MOORE
ORLANDO SENTINEL
Poo-poo and pee-pee jokes are among the first we laugh at once we've abandoned diapers and learned to speak. That's why we call bodily function gags the lowest form of humor.
But why is it that some people, regardless of race, creed, etc., never get off this bottom rung on the comedy ladder?
More to the point, who in Hollywood has decided that the toilet is the surest way to reach the "urban" (black) audience? Is there market research, racist or otherwise, to back this up?
Is all that it takes to win a black audience a comedy with hip-hop stars, drug use, comical sex and repeated noisy trips to the can?
"Soul Plane" is about "the first urban" (black) airline, whose motto is "We fly. We party. We land." They left out "We potty."
Put together by guys with "Scary Movie" among their credits, it starts out as a promising trip back to "Airplane" land. It's a spoof of the modern air travel experience -- rude or incompetent ticket agents, baggage handlers and flight attendants, food that doesn't appeal to every appetite. And it is packed with comic clich & eacute;s about the cultural differences between Black America and the Rest of America.
Story line
Nashawn (Kevin Hart) has an accident in an airplane toilet (surprise) and loses his dog to airline incompetence.
The lawsuit victory gives him enough money to start his own airline, NWA. He stuffs his terminal with fried chicken sellers and staffs NWA with hefty, sassy security folk (Mo'Nique and Sommore), streetwalker-clad flight attendants, and the only available black pilot, the drug-addled rapper Snoop Dogg, who can be funnier than this.
The plane has a club deck, a hot tub, a first-class section and a "low-class" section.
Which is where the "honkies" (Tom Arnold, Missi Pyle et al) sit for the airline's inaugural flight. They're white, so naturally, they've just returned from a trip to Crackerland.
They're in for a little culture shock as they deal with coin-operated luggage racks, meals of fried chicken buckets passed aisle to aisle, and drinks that range from Colt 45 to cut-rate cognac.
Funny.
Who's who
Other passengers include "Friday" vet John Witherspoon as an oversexed blind man who hits on everything in perfume, including the flaming flight attendant, "Flame" (Gary Anthony Williams).
Nashawn's pal Mugs is played by Method Man, and the honkies' youngest, the white-wants-to-be-black kid, is Ryan Pinkston.
The usual blast of "mile-high club" jokes, sexual prowess zingers and Islamic passenger sight-gags are mixed with the too-busy lavatory (D.L. Hughley could only land the role of restroom attendant) and the odd urban touch -- the plane has custom "spinner" wheels. Somebody's pimped this ride.
The one funny bit is a sketch in which Mo'Nique ("The Parkers") and Sommore trash talk and strip-search everybody who passes through their metal detector in Terminal Malcolm X.
You could flush the rest of "Soul Plane" and nobody would notice.