"It's okay to hate the passengers," a rookie flight attendant is informed. Similarly, it's okay to hate "Flightplan," but that would be a waste of energy and emotion for what is the fluffiest, most outrageously plotted film of Jodie Foster's career, "Freaky Friday" and "Candleshoe" included.

Foster's emotional strength gives the ludicrous film -- about an ass-kicking mom willing to do anything to recover her daughter -- the necessary jolt of legitimacy. "Flightplan" plays like "Panic Room" with wings, although this time around, the bad guys aren't just a trio of robbers but a planeful of suspects, from the unhelpful flight crew to the 400 international passengers.

Foster plays Kyle Pratt, who boards the luxury, double-decker Alto 8474 plane winging its way to America from Berlin in order to bury her husband, whose body and coffin are ensconced in the cargo hold. She's accompanied by her distraught, six-year-old daughter Julia, Pratt's only reason for living and therefore her reason to run amok once Julia goes missing.
What ensues is a non-stop shrill ride in which nobody believes that Julia even exists and instead thinks that the screaming, demanding mom should have checked her delusional, emotional baggage at the gate. In the end, Kyle's sheer determination and in-depth knowledge of the plane she helped design vindicates her and gives the bad guys their comeuppance.

Over the course of two hours, Pratt climbs into just about every nook and cranny of the plane, just short of whereever it is that they store the mythical stash of blankets. It appears that on this flying behemoth, members of the mile-high club have many more places to tryst than just the cramped lavatories.

The contrived action cycles through Foster running down the aisles, accosting the pilot, insisting she's not crazy and infiltrating the plane's recesses through secret passages that make just as much as sense as accessing the lounge through the conservatory's secret passage in Clue.

The absolute worst -- and therefore the most horribly amusing -- aspect of the flight is how casually cruel the passengers and crew are to Pratt. One fellow in coach snidely comments, "Don't know what all the fuss is about. It's not like she lost a palm pilot." At another point, when Pratt tells the pilot (who doesn't seem to fly the plane much) he'll be sorry for doubting her once Julia is found, he replies, "Take it up with customer service when we land."

To take "Flightplan" seriously is to take yourself too seriously -- after all, who bought the movie ticket here? Although the attempts to find Julia become a tad episodic and long, overall the film keeps a brisk pace that's aided by the outrageous antics of the supporting cast. Without giving away too much, Peter Sarsgaard plays his usual sleepy-eyed character, but later develops into a typical thriller cliche, which is an interesting choice for the usually indie, offbeat actor.

In the wake of "Red Eye," it's also a relief to see that the filmmakers decided to keep the advertised action solely on the plane, no doubt made possible by the massive geography of the aircraft. When buying this ticket to ride, remember to buckle up for mindless entertainment complete with a super-cheesy ending to go with your honey roasted peanuts.