SNAKES on a phone

There's no way Snakes on a Plane, which New Line opens next Friday, can live up to the hype its title alone has generated on the web. Sadly, it can live down to it--the ads, and the posters (including the comic book one), aren't nearly as hip or as witty as some of the stuff floating out there in the bits and bytes. And the absence of press screenings indicates a movie that's more garter than rattlesnake.

But in its final week of pre-opening ballyhoo New Line has finally come up with a great promotional gimmick. Really, genius stuff, the kind of thing William Castle, producer of the 50s frightfests House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler, might have come up with had he lived into the cyber era. Go to your phones now and send a little Sam.