Soul Plane (2004)

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Soul Plane (2004) American comedy movie directed by Jessy Terrero, written by Chuck Wilson and Bo Zenga and starring Tom Arnold, Kevin Hart, Method Man and Snoop Dogg. Soul Plane garnered negative reviews from critics and was a box office bomb, grossing $14 million worldwide against a $16 million budget.[1]

Soul Plane poster


Plot

Why just fly when you can soar with soul? After a humiliating experience on an airplane, Nashawn Wade sues the airline and is awarded a huge settlement. Determined to make good with the money, Nashawn creates the full service airline of his dreams, complete with sexy stewardesses, funky music, a hot onboard dance club, and a bathroom attendant. Departing from all-new Terminal X in Los Angeles, Soul Plane gives "fly" a whole new meaning taking its passengers on a maiden voyage full of comedy.[2]

Controversy

The premise of the movie was simple, born from numerous comedians’ jokes about “What if there were a ‘black’ airline?” Somehow, some way, that got spun into a feature-length “comedy” pandering to the lowest common denominator. It was 90 minutes of shameful humor that elucidates why African Americans often don’t get the respect they deserve, on and off the screen. If it matters whether African American actors, writers and producers are appropriately acknowledged by Hollywood, then never should we strive to create or support something so decidedly self-hateful and derogatory, much less defend it after the fact.[3]

Spike Lee in a recent speech said that "Soul Plane" is "coonery and buffoonery," among the most offensive ever in terms of showing blacks in a negative light. Other actors, writers and directors have called "Soul Plane" a modern-day minstrel show and a throwback to films in the 1940s and 1950s, when blacks were mostly shown as lazy clowns. The South Los Angeles-based National Alliance for Positive Action has aimed its protest at MGM, the studio behind the film. "Soul Plane" is the latest in a slate of urban-based films being developed by MGM after the crossover success of the studio's 2001 release "Barbershop."[4]

The movie is about "the first urban" (black) airline, whose motto is "We fly. We party. We land." They left out "We potty.". Put together by guys with Scary Movie among their credits, it starts out as a promising trip back to Airplane land. It's a spoof of the modern air travel experience -- rude or incompetent ticket agents, baggage handlers and flight attendants, food that doesn't appeal to every appetite. And it is packed with comic cliches about the cultural differences between Black America and the Rest of America.[5]

The whole flight from L.A. to New York is filled with gay, fart, rap-video, white-people-are-lame and white-women-fall-for-black-men jokes, and a presumably "Airplane" inspired crash landing by non-pilots after the pilot dies.[6]

The “N-word” spread freely along the movie.

Actress Anne-Marie Johnson, the national chairwoman of the equal employment opportunity branch of the Screen Actors Guild, says that the maker and actors have no respect for the “scars ‘Soul Plane’ leaves on the culture.” Johnson, who starred in the 1987 comedy “Hollywood Shuffle,” which makes fun of black stereotypes in Hollywood, added: “Nothing has changed since ‘Hollywood Shuffle.’ In fact, it’s gotten worse.”[4]

Reference