Snake Outta Compton (2018)

“A film that follows the journey of an aspiring rap crew on their quest to make it big while tackling a huge snake.  Wait, what?”

Obviously, there’s are many ways rapper’s might seek to make a name for themselves.  Engaging with talent scouts or attend Battle (Rapple?) Royale’s.  But have you ever wondered what other approaches or challenges a young rapper might go through?  Nor had we, but if you did want to know then you can watch Snake Outta Compton for an answer, of sorts. 

That’s right, people only sign rappers that fight giant snakes if you want success.  Let’s face it, the sight of Eminem wrestling with a giant killer snake has some merit to it, but perhaps that’s for another film or another Plopcorn night, we might even let the snake win.

Snake Outta Compton is a slow starter based on the premise that a snake that’s been thrown off an airplane (and we are looking at you, Samuel L!) manages to smash into the windscreen of a detective that’s cruising Compton looking for trouble.  Nothing out of the ordinary here.

The snake died obviously, but amongst it’s bloodied, dismembered corpse an egg survives and hatches in the hands of Vurkel, a teenage mad scientist, who being a social pariah has built himself an enlarging ray, probably to compensate for his small penis.

What follows inevitably, is the snake escapes, gorges itself on homeless Bill & Ted (I kid you not) and then goes on a rampage through Compton before, and I’m not giving the plot away too much here, the rappers save the day.

How they get there though is another story and can be summarised with the following questions:

• WTF is going on with the detectives?
• HTF does a giant 20ft long snake get down a toilet drain and then turn around and bite the fingers off one of the detectives?
• WTF is the going on with the gangster and his bitches, and why is there a rap battle in a night club during the day?
• Why would you climb a mobile phone pole to get away from a) a giant snake that’s already so big he dwarfs the building and b) a psychopathic Vurkel who’s been infected with giant snake DNA?
• How big is the damn snake, because it seems to vary from scene to scene.

All admiral questions and all that I’d like some answers for please?

Joking aside, the film seems to have come from the idea of a title. From Straight outta Compton, it’s not a long stretch to think that someone thought Snake Outta Compton would be a great idea for a film (and we applaud them for that thought!) They’ve worked onwards from there to try and find something that works, starting with how the snake gets there, how they can move the plot onwards to a conclusion on the rooftop of a record label.

It’s the individual plot points and scenes that don’t seem to flow however. The sub plot of a dodgy detective teaching his rookie partner how to scam the system, provides a much-needed comedy touch early in the film for without this, you could easily turn the film off and find something else (and believe us, we have a list as long as Bao Xishun’s arms (look him up). 

It’s only when we get to the second act the film seems to know what it is, but even then, the script needs some polishing to really eke out a few more laughs and show us what it can do.  Admittedly, some of the finer nuances of rap and Compton may have been lost on a group of middle-aged white men whose only experience of Compton is a small village just down the road in surrey (check out this spiffing hit from Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer for a real sense of our entire rap knowledge).  Having said that, perhaps if we did know more we’d have disliked it more?

Special mention however must be made to the rappers get away, after they steal the detective’s car.  The sheer bare ‘faced’ cheek of it, made for a proper LOL moment and is definitely one of the highlights of the film.

Overall, the film has a fun premise but ultimately fails to deliver. It’s worth a watch if, like us you enjoy bad films, but must go down as a missed opportunity.  There is a great mid-credits scene that could tee up a possible sequel and we’d like to see if this ever comes to fruition, but I doubt it will.