Some of the gags in Soul Plane, about a down-on-his-luck entrepreneur who starts the nation's first black airline, are so outrageous and unexpected that they draw big laughs.
But there are too many groaner moments, too, in a movie that tries to be a sort of African-American Airplane!, albeit one in which Tom Arnold has top billing.
One of Soul Plane's first gags takes place in an airplane lavatory, with much grimacing and unhappy sound effects. And that's not the last of the toilet humor in this high-flying low-humored comedy, which also finds great amusement in recreational drugs and sex. Sex in the cockpit. Sex on the landing gear. Sex with a baked potato.
Jessy Terrero, marking his feature directing debut, keeps things zooming along from one wacky situation to the next, although writers Bo Zenga and Chuck Wilson sometimes leave him flat. Faring best are Mo'Nique and Loni Love as Jamiqua and Shaniece, respectively, a pair of sassy security checkpoint screeners who insult and prod and paddle the passengers coming through. However, funny as all this is, one has the uncomfortable feeling that a lot of the humor would be considered racist if not written by and promoted to minorities.
The jumbo 747 pride of NWA airlines is a funny sight gag, though, painted royal purple and sporting spinner rims on its huge wheels. When Arnold's Mr. Hunkee and his family, just returned from a visit to Cracker World, have their tickets switched to NWA, they find themselves flying "low class." This means coin lockers over the seats, strap-hangers like on a bus and a rabbit-ear TV to broadcast the flight instructions. The captain (Snoop Dogg), who is afraid of heights and is ferrying a stash of drugs, puts a pair of fuzzy dice over the rear-view mirror in the cockpit.
Much of this is fun, but there are too many moments when the gags go begging for laughs that are just not there.
**
Soul Plane
Starring: Tom Arnold, Kevin Hart, Method Man, Snoop Dogg, K.D. Aubert, Godfrey, Brian Hooks, D.L. Hughley, Arielle Kebbel, Mo'Nique, Loni Love.
Rated: R, contains racial humor, sex, drugs, profanity, violence.
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