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We begin our report about last night's Snakes on a Plane premiere at the Chinese Theatre, held back by New Line until the very last possible minute to prevent critics from having uncharitable opinions about a movie whose pre-release hype became so overwhelming that the mere mention of the title could induce grand mal seizures in anyone in possession of a valid press credential, with a disclaimer: After almost exactly a year of writing about this movie and its unstoppable march across the internets, our weariness of various combinations of the words "motherfucking," "snakes," and "plane" may have lowered our expectations to an absurdly low point. All we wanted from the 'Lil Airborne Reptilian Infestation Movie That Could was for at least one guy to have his genitals fanged-up while in the process of bodily waste elimination, and God bless their pandering little hearts, they delivered the mandatory junk-chomping scene with cynical aplomb. Once that lone condition was satisfied, we were more than happy to laugh at lines of dialogue both intentionally and accidentally hilarious, hurl ourselves forward in our seat with delight when the areola on a bare, surgically enhanced breast became a targeting mechanism for a mamba strike, and generally stop giving a shit about how someone might smuggle several hundred angry predators aboard a red-eye even with the aid of the most corrupt of airport security regimes. Motherfucking snakes were on the motherfucking plane (see how easy it is to fall back into it?), they were biting everything in sight, and that was enough for us, as we are constitutionally incapable of not enjoying a well-executed fake-titty attack. Call us easy to please or New Line Kool-Aid chuggers, but we can't see any reason why anyone who would be interested in the film based on the title alone shouldn't get a little drunk and watch Samuel L. Jackson shout expletives while he carries out his snake-elimination duties. That's all we can muster by way of a review.

Part The Second: After-Parties On A Rooftop [after the jump]

The after-party, as you might expect, was done up in an airport theme. Upon reaching the roof of the ArcLight parking structure where it was held, guests marched through a metal-detector and X-ray machine gauntlet just as unattended as the ones in the world of the film must have been, making it easy for one of the party's "passengers" to sneak in any Samsonite set jammed full of death-adders, shampoo-bomb, or low-grade nuclear device intended to reduce the world's population of free booze drinkers by three hundred or so. Servers of both sexes dressed in retro flight attendant gear either pushed around airline-style carts full of candy or gyrated atop platforms as go-go dancers. Boxed meals, possibly purloined from a poorly secured supply shed at LAX, were served. The aforementioned free booze, as it must, flowed. And in perhaps the event's most eerily airport-accurate touch, t-shirts upon which various SoaP-themed decals were ironed-to-order were handed out from behind replica ticket counters, causing interminably long waits and feelings of "we're all gonna die before we ever get to the front of this line" dread perfectly simulating those encountered by anyone who has ever needed a boarding pass printed by a human being. The New Line party planners were nothing if not psychotically dedicated to air-travel verisimilitude.

Among the celebrities we managed to see during the few moments we weren't standing on line were star Kenan Thompson (accompanied by a very hot, very gaudily bosomed date in a porn-appropriate evening gown), biggest-deal-within-two-square-miles Chris Rock, Kelly Osbourne, cast members Bobby Cannavale and Lin Shaye, various cast members whose names we can't recall without cheating on IMDb, and two guys from The Office (the one that Steve Carrell is secretly gay for and the one that Pam shouldn't be marrying). Rumors of Samuel L. Jackson's presence at the event were rampant, but we didn't personally lay eyes on him. We imagine he was quite busy politely pretending that each variation on his "motherfucking snakes" line was the first he'd heard. He seems like that kind of guy.

As we were headed to our car, we stumbled upon a clearly confused Rock and his date in the act of pretending they knew where they'd parked. After several seconds of spinning around and craning their necks in a search for the vehicle they'd left on a lower level, they passed us on the way down the stairs, and a Legitimate Journalist friend of ours asked Rock what he'd thought of the movie. "It was incredible," he said, noticing the reporter's pad and not breaking stride, "better than The Godfather." Because we must bring this full-circle: Dude, Snakes on a Motherfucking Mobster.

[Photo: Getty Images]