Grade: C+

Verdict: Almost as funny as it is offensive.

By SONIA MURRAY
Cox News Service

Good reading, passengers, welcome aboard the "Soul Plane" review.

Fasten your seat belts as this comedy takes you up to a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet, and the almost nonstop stereotypes set the depiction of blacks in movies back decades.

And yet (gulp), it is still funny.

Yes, even though the plane is a pimpish, garish purple with chrome rims on its wheels that spin. The upper deck is a club where Hpnotiq and Grey Goose Vodka is served and Atlanta rap acts Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz and the Ying Yang Twins are shooting a video. And its "low class" section -- economy on most other airlines -- looks like a run-down bus, with Colt 45 malt liquor ads above the windows, tattered multi-colored cloth seats and straps hanging from the ceiling for standing passengers.

This is Nashawn Wade's (Kevin Hart) dream come to life. And how he ended up with his own airline is the stuff of South Park-induced nightmares.

It seems Wade got some bad beef stroganoff on a flight. And as he is, shall we say, expelling it, a series of wrong button-pushing by the crew finds him being pulled through the toilet, rear first. He survives, but as he witnesses through the window, his dog isn't so lucky.

So one lawsuit, a tepid attempt at tear-jerking on the stand and an incomprehensible $100 million settlement later, he starts Nashawn Wade Airlines. Or NWA for short. (Insert link to gangster rap group NWA here.)

On its maiden flight from California to New York are Elvis Hunkee (Tom Arnold) -- pronounced honk-ee -- his children, Heather (Arielle Kebbel) and Billy (Ryan Pinkston), and girlfriend Barbara (Missi Pyle), who've all just suffered through a vacation in Cracker Land. ("Soul Plane" is an equal-opportunity offender, you see.) Cherry (comedian Sommore) and DJ (Brian Hooks) are over-adventurous mile-high club members. Take-no-stuff security person Jamiqua (comedian Mo'Nique) and Shaniece (Loni Love) are absolutely hilarious -- and underused. Then there's Wade's mooch of a cousin, Muggsy (rapper Method Man), and the suspect pilot he hired, Captain Mack (rapper Snoop Dogg) -- none of whom apparently needed to display any real acting ability here. And why should they when the video-director-turned-movie director's debut has no real plot or overarching purpose other than laughter?

"We fly, we party and we land," says Wade, a character that feels familiar in that Hart's chiseled looks are similar to Eddie Murphy's, he's got a confident D.L. Hughley smile (he also appears in "Soul Plane"), his high voice is right up here with Chris Tucker -- and he couldn't have squeaked any truer words.

Indeed, getting to the flight, partying and landing is almost all this rib-tickler hanging on by one brain cell is about -- with some thankfully minor storylines about Wade's love life, Hunkee wondering if his kids love him at all, and a frisky blind man (John Witherspoon) thrown in between meal service.

Which in low class, of course, is boxes of Popeye's fried chicken.