'PLANE' LANDS A FEW LAUGHS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

THE FOLKS who made ``Soul Plane'' have achieved two significant accomplishments: They've revived the ``Airplane!''-style disaster spoof for the post-9/11 world, and they've taken bathroom humor to new heights of, um, turbulence.

Other than that, this is a real hit-and-miss compendium of racial, intoxicant and sex jokes that could have used more narrative push and stronger quality control. The thing never gets quite as wild as it constantly threatens (and needs) to. Still, just getting such a satire off the ground in this day and alarmist age lends ``Soul Plane'' a lot of good will, which cushions the production through its bumpier passages.

The basic idea is that an African-American-owned airline would take a ghetto-fabulous approach to the friendly skies: on-board dance club, washroom attendants, chrome spinner landing wheels, etc. It's the dream come true of a wayward entrepreneur, Nashawn Wade (Kevin Hart of TV's ``The Big House''), who invests the lawsuit money he won from another airline (yes, it was over a lavatory incident) in the venture, which he dubs NWA.

The maiden L.A.-to-New York flight is piloted by stoner Capt. Mack (Snoop Dogg), whose credentials are by nature dubious. Security is provided by the voracious, chattering Jamiqua (Mo'Nique), who loves abusing her power on any male passenger who vaguely resembles Denzel Washington. The one frightened white family who got transferred from another carrier onto NWA is headed by Tom Arnold. The flight attendants dress like strippers, the strippers keep their bikinis on, an old blind guy acts dirty, and an excited couple find themselves in many uncomfortable situations while trying to join the Mile High Club.

It's all done fairly exuberantly, no matter how lame or insulting a given gag turns out to be. Director Jessy Terrero, a tourist from the world of music videos, displays some capacity for intermittent comic timing but little ability to sustain and raise the humor stakes as the journey proceeds. The Zucker brothers have nothing to worry about. But they should probably thank the ``Soul Plane'' brain trust for making the skies once again safe for burlesque.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

SOUL PLANE - Two and one half stars

(R: language, toilet humor, sex, drug use)

Starring: Kevin Hart, Tom Arnold, Snoop Dogg, Method Man, Mo'Nique, Sofia Vergara, D.L. Hughley, John Witherspoon.

Director: Jessy Terrero.

Running time: 1 hr. 26 min.

Playing: Wide release.

In a nutshell: Sporadically funny and raunchy, this spoof about the first airline designed with the ``urban traveler'' in mind doesn't go far enough to really reach its outrageous destination.

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

Snoop Dogg, left, and Method Man fly the funky skies in the crude but good-natured spoof ``Soul Plane.''