Soul Plane

WARNING: This review is hidden because it reveals the content of the film.
Click here to show this review. "Soul Plane" is an incredibly unfunny, incredibly racist excuse for comedy with no plot and lazy gags. The conceit of the film is that if an African American man did own a plane, it’d would be the most coonish, irresponsibly run, “hip”, and party-filled airline. That’s really all there is to the movie. There’s no real plot, just a quick origin story for the airline (which is most undignified) and a demonstration of what the flights are like. I could in theory have seen how this would have worked. A “hip” airline that really speaks to the black community, with a single white family bearing witness to their African American neighbours being finally able to let loose and say what they’ve been thinking about airplanes for years... there might be some material there. The fact is, the owner of the “Soul Plane” is not a responsible business man who has triumphed over adversity in an industry run by white people. He did not actually earn the money to buy his own plane, instead getting it when a toilet incident kills his dog (just go with it, the sequence where this happens is idiotic and trying to explain exactly what happened would be a waste of time) Even while managing the airline, the "lead" character is completely incompetent, hiring the worst possible pilots to fly his plane and nearly killing everyone on board. I say “lead” because there really is no actual main character to this film, the story jumps from gag to gag for the entire running time with some running jokes that resemble a plot giving you only a vague idea of who you should be cheering for.

The movie degrades women and shows them all as having no ambitions or desires besides having sex with black men (without even having the guts to show any male or female nudity in an R rated comedy aimed at teens) and depicts all men as stupid or incompetent. The film makers idea of a joke is constantly throwing stereotypes at the screen. What do they serve in the plane? Well Popeye's fried chicken of course! What do they serve in the airport lobby? Fried chicken and waffles! I lost track as to whether they ended up with watermelon, grape soda, pickled pig’s feet and chitlins. A special dishonorable mention to John Witherspoon that plays a blind character so stupid he confuses a baked potato with a woman in a really disgusting and rage inducing gag. The movie starts off bad, then irritating, then genuinely offensive over and over until you either become a seething pot of boiling rage, or you fall back into your chair in a semi-depressed state, wishing it would simply end so you can try to purge all memories of this abomination from your mind. Writing a review for this was incredibly difficult because it's genuinely hard to express how bad this film is. If I can put it simply, there is absolutely no reason to watch “Soul Plane”, to recommend it or for this movie to have even been made. (On Dvd, July 27, 2012)