Soul Plane
"Soul Plane" wants to know why the friendly skies can't be a little blacker. The answer is that there's a possibility they'd wind up like this scattershot comedy, which, I guess, is a black "Airplane!" When it's funny it's uproarious. Otherwise, you're crestfallen to discover that the movie is a relentless sucker punch to black entrepreneurship.
Written by Chuck Wilson and Bo Zenga and directed by Jessy Terrero, the movie is predicated on unkempt, uncouth misbehavior, centered around the airline's maiden flight from Los Angeles to New York City. The plane is a big purple, pimped-out air bus that looks like Barney with chrome mags.
The company is the result of a $100 million settlement won by Nashawn (Kevin Hart) after he sues a major airline for killing his dog. The movie sets up a few good gags: The plane leaves from Terminal X (as in Malcolm), which is a vast mall that includes a basketball court and a massive dollar store. And the airline's name, NWA, must be some iteration of the unprintable name of Ice Cube and Dr. Dre's old rap group: person "with an airline."
A lot of the story revolves around a white family of four, headed by an uptight Tom Arnold and Missi Pyle (whose face has amazing reactions), that's bumped onto the NWA flight. Predictably enough, they're named the Hunkees, although nobody pronounces it that way. By the end of the movie, each one is liberated, chiefly through sex, which abounds in "Soul Plane." You can't go two steps without it hitting you upside the head.
The movie has a thorough notion of what a flying black might be like, putting two of the self-proclaimed "queens of comedy," Mo'Nique and Sommore, on security detail. They have one decent scene at a metal detector that's like an excerpt from the BET stand-up show "Comic View."
The flight crew is led by Snoop Dogg. The idea of him as the pilot is funny, but its execution is a different story. His Captain Mack is an ex-con who has never flown before, is typically stoned (as Snoop Dogg must be), and happens to be afraid of heights. It would've been cleverer if he'd played it straight, leaving the chronic toking to someone else.
The plane's first-class cabin resembles the inside of Air Force One reupholstered to look like the champagne room of a strip club, where Lou Rawls is playing. Upstairs, there's a nightclub as big as a football stadium. "Low class" looks like a subway car, complete with Colt 45 ads and a standing-only section. While the premier passengers get filet mignon, the folks in coach have to pass around a box of fried chicken.
Then there's the instructional safety video, which is set to a customized version of Destiny Child's "Survivor" and performed by the flight attendants, including Flame, the obligatory lascivious gay guy. Despite him, it's one of the funniest things I've seen all year. More often, however, the movie traffics in embarrassing bathroom jokes and witless raunch, a lot of it courtesy of the tirelessly vulgar John Witherspoon, as a randy blind gentleman.
NWA is where black people fly, presumably because it meets needs "white airlines" don't. Who's so sick of Delta and United that they'd be crazy enough to buy a ticket to ride on an unproven airline named after a defunct rap group?
In contrast to the entrepreneurial spirit of "Barbershop," the joke of NWA is that when black people do for themselves, they do shoddily. Why is that funny? "Soul Plane" is sometimes outrageous (every single scene in low class is hilarious) but frequently saddening: The people in first class are as ghetto as the ones in coach.
"Soul Plane" presents a commercially viable idea of a black culture beset with low self-esteem and lower expectations. There's an old observation among some African-Americans that Chris Rock popularized: There are black people, and there are these other black people, who are unreliable and out of control. It's these other black people you don't want flying your airplanes -- or making your movies.
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