Soul Plane Movie Review:


Soul Plane is as repulsive and stale a comedy that anyone will see this year. Aiming for laughs in the raunchiest sense, this comedy delivers one tired joke after another and it quickly crashes without even leaving the ground.

The film opens with a young black man named Nashawn Wade (Kevin Hart) having a terrible experience on a airline, which includes being discriminated against and losing his dog. Wade sues the airline and is awarded a vast sum of 100 million dollars, which with the help of his street wise cousin Muggsy (Method Man); the two open up their own airline called NWA (Nashawn Wade Airlines). However, this is no ordinary airline, it includes stewardesses that look like models, an onboard dance club, a bathroom attendant (D.L Hughley), a mushroom gobbling Captain (Snoop Dogg), along with a lot of music and a lot of soul. The plane itself is bright purple with each tire having its own rims and a full hydraulics system. The passengers depart from Terminal X, where there are hip-hop stores galore and a fast talking female security officer (Mo’Nique), who is looking for her own Denzel.

The film picks up on the first flight of NWA, which is departing from Los Angeles. After their vacation to “Cracker World,” the Hunkee family finds out through cancellations that they are the only white people on this flight. The dad of the family, who is played by Tom Arnold, watches his young son gain the apparel, mouth, and talent of a hip hop video director, his 18 year-old daughter’s unleashing of her rebellious freedom and his square wife becoming fascinated with a equipped male model on board.
Another subplot develops concerning Nashawn and his old girlfriend (K.D. Aubert), who just happens to be riding in first class and has no idea he owns the airline, even though his picture is plastered everywhere. The film then takes off to the skies and begs to deliver laughs, but is more of less too repugnant to even be the least bit funny.

Director Jessy Terrero and writers Bo Zenga & Chuck Wilson attempt to deliver a fresh new comedy with Soul Plane, but it is nothing more than a horrible film that’s harsh, sexually-oriented and racist humor are just more embarrassing than witty. All of the racial stereotypes are poked fun at through out, in which the writers seem to hit under the belt just a little too much in this film. Examples include all of the racist post 9/11 jokes at Middle Easterners. In one scene Snoop Dogg’s character reveals he learned how to fly on simulators in prison with a group of Arabs and another has all the passengers of the lower class section scrutinizing an Arab passenger. These moments are just taken a bit too far, as are most of the racist jokes in the film. Soul Plane is also an extremely dirty film with its numerous sex, drug, and toilet humor incidents. One includes a couple that becomes intrigue by pleasuring one another in different sections of the plane, another involves John Witherspoon and a baked potato, enough said, use your imagination. Most of the jokes in the film are also ones that have been played out numerous times before to where the comedy is setup as shocking gross out humor, but it is all pretty much bland. The only funny thing in this film is the plane itself and if you have all seen the trailer with it bouncing on hydraulics down the runway, then you have seen this film’s best moment.

Kevin Hart smiles a lot and conveys hardly anything in his role as Nashawn Wade. Snoop Dogg and Method Man pretty much play themselves delivering antics and lines that we have seen from both before. Tom Arnold is dismal in his role as the concerned Dad. D.L. Hughley has a few brief moments as the bathroom attendant and though aggressively over the top, it is at times amusing to watch Mo’Nique search for her Denzel as the one of the airline’s security personnel.

Soul Plane never takes off, it just buries itself in raunchy sex and toilet humor, while also aiming for high laughs from its jokes at different races. None of these notions work and what is delivered is a embarrassingly poor comedy with a wasted concept and cast.
Grade: D

Joseph Tucker

Site Contents Copyright© The Z Review, unless used with permission.This site has no intention to infringe on the rights of the film owners of Soul Plane and intellectual copyright holders of the movies mentioned herein & hold copyright over the movie, characters, merchandise & storyline.