Review: Soul Plane

As idiotic as it is immature, Soul Plane’s infatuation with playa culture will likely have most reaching for the barf bag.

Soul Plane
Photo: MGM

Sit back, fasten your seat belts, and get ready to fly the stereotypical skies. In Soul Plane, a small-time entrepreneurial loser, Nashawn Wade (Kevin Hart), gets stuck in an airplane toilet and winds up successfully suing for $100 million. What to do with such a cargo of cash? Start up a big pimping airline for black customers called NWA (Nashawn Wade Airlines, natch) featuring Snoop Dogg as the dope-smoking pilot, Mo’Nique as the trash-talking security guard, Method Man as a goofy clown, buxom airline stewardesses, and all the bling-bling accoutrements that the passengers’ hip-hop-loving hearts desire.

An urban comedy in which procuring music-video status symbols of gaudy jewelry, Cristal champagne, spinning rims, and bootylicious honeys is depicted as the African-American dream, Jessy Terrero’s dunderheaded film should have been left in the studio hangar. Homophobic and equal-opportunity racist, the film is an assembly line of jokes about fried chicken and 40s, flamboyant gays, and idiotic whites, here embodied by a goofy Tom Arnold and his black-loving clan returning from a vacation at “Cracker Land.”

Given Soul Plane’s boisterous, hit-and-miss nature, there are a few amusingly inane moments—from Salt N’ Pepa’s “Push It” serving as a laxative to the disastrous consequences of using a cellphone in the air—but they’re largely drowned out in a storm of dubious (and pathetic) race-related jokes. NWA is located in Terminal Malcolm X! The plane is outfitted like a Chevy Escalade! Everyone’s suspicious of the Arab guy in the turban! As idiotic as it is immature, Soul Plane’s infatuation with playa culture will likely have most reaching for the barf bag. Which is to say, Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker’s Airplane this is not.

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Score: 
 Cast: Tom Arnold, Kevin Hart, Method Man, Snoop Dogg, K.D. Aubert, Godfrey, Brian Hooks, D.L. Hughley, Mo'Nique Imes-Jackson, John Witherspoon  Director: Jessy Terrero  Screenwriter: Chuck Wilson, Bo Zenga  Distributor: MGM  Running Time: 86 min  Rating: R  Year: 2004  Buy: Video

Nick Schager

Nick Schager is the entertainment critic for The Daily Beast. His work has also appeared in Variety, Esquire, The Village Voice, and other publications.

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