Soul Plane

December 12, 2004

Rated: Unrated Runtime: 92 min Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

We missed this one in the theaters which is a real shame because I suspect this movie would be best seen in a large group. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great home viewing as well but an audience has a tendency to feed off itself when it comes to really good comedies. Think about the difference between seeing Barbershop in the theaters and at home and you’ll know just what I mean.

The premise of the movie is straight forward, Nashawn (Kevin Hart) has an incident on a flight and ends up winning $100 million in a lawsuit. He decides to start up his own airline that will cater to black clientele. OK, so let the jokes begin!

For starters the terminal the airline departs from is terminal X, as in Malcolm X. There’s a basketball court, a $99 store, a place to buy some bling-bling rims, and some really nice cars on display. When you board the plane you’re either in First Class, Business Class, or Low Class. As you would expect First Class is totally rockin with some NICE seats, plasma displays and other top-notch features. Low class is hysterical though, from the quarter-lockers as overhead bins to the old TV mounted in the wall (complete with rabbit ears) the visual jokes are non-stop. And yes, they serve chicken as the in-flight meal.

Now to the story. MMmmmm. What story? Seriously, there really isn’t much of a plot here, just something there to get us from one joke to the next. Snoop Dogg is the stoner pilot that’s afraid of heights, Tom Arnold and family (the Honkeys) are there as the token white folks, and you’ve got a couple of other little storylines that try to give the movie a sense of purpose. They even threw in a romance about 30 minutes into the movie which will make you scratch your head and wonder if you missed a key point at the beginning.

This really doesn’t matter though as you’re watching this for the laughs, and it has plenty of those. There are countless racial jokes here targeted towards blacks and whites, but it’s all in good fun much like Barbershop so nobody complains. If possible try to gather up a racially diverse group of your friends and watch this one, you’ll love it!

Posted by John | Filed Under 4 Stars, Comedy, DVD, Gary Anthony Williams, K.D. Aubert, Kevin Hart, Method Man, Snoop Dogg, Unrated