ANACONDA REVIEW
“An attempted horror-comedy that never fully commits to picking its lane”
Like most people, I was a little puzzled when I learned this “remake” of the 1997 giant snake movie Anaconda was going to be a comedy starring Paul Rudd and Jack Black, though it was less perplexing when the first trailer appeared, making the concept behind this comedy much clearer. Mind you, I’ve never been one of those critics who presumes that a genre movie being dumped on Christmas Day is destined to fail, as it’s clearly trying to target the dudes who don’t have any better family plans on the year’s biggest holiday. But I also can’t forget all of this movie’s predecessors, including the Black Christmas remake and Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. Anaconda probably isn’t as bad as either of those Christmas Day “dumpers,” but it doesn’t do itself any favors either by trying to sell itself as something akin to the recent Jumanji movies.
The general premise is pretty well spelled out from that trailer: A group of friends has decided to pursue their “childhood” dream of remaking the 1997 version of the film, which came out when most of these actors would have been in their mid-to-late 20s, not exactly children. Of the group, Jack Black’s Doug has always dreamed of being a filmmaker, while Rudd’s Griff left their hometown of Buffalo to be an actor in Hollywood, leaving his friend Doug behind. On returning, Griff is reunited with his childhood crush Claire (Thandiwe Newton) who is going through a messy divorce. After failing to get proper funding for this unofficial sequel, the group travels down to Brazil to shoot their film “run and gun.” Once they arrive, they hire snake handler Santiago (Selton Mello from last year’s Oscar winner, I’m Still Here) and convince Daniela Melchior’s Ana to let them use her boat to make their movie.
What could possibly go wrong? Well, everything, and that’s where the humor is supposed to come in.
Anaconda is only the third movie from filmmaker Tom Gormican, who had a nice surprise with 2022’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, starring Nicolas Cage and Pedro Pascal, which worked better than his earlier film, That Awkward Moment. This one offers more action than his first movie, but treads similar META ground as his previous movie in that it takes place in a world where the 1997 Anaconda movie exists and is frequently referenced.
Essentially, Rudd and Black are doing the exact same thing we’ve seem them do for years now. Rudd has thankfully taken a nice break from that shtick in recent years, but Black’s presence in kids’ films, including this year’s massive blockbuster The Minecraft Movie, has become so pervasive, it’s hard to take him seriously while trying to play a more serious character that’s different from himself. In some ways, Anaconda is more in the vein of Rudd and Black’s smaller Sundancey movies, only in the fact that their characters have more of a backstory and arc rather than just being snake fodder. But they just aren’t as interesting as other characters, like Santiago the snake handler, who offers some of the movie’s funniest moments.
I was surprised to learn that Newton took on the role of one of only two women in the movie, since she’s a fantastic dramatic actress many fell in love with when she was introduced as Tom Cruise’s love interest in Mission: Impossible 2 (and almost immediately forgotten and dumped from that franchise after the John Woo-directed entry.) She doesn’t seem as suited for the film’s comedy, so she’s just shoehorned in there more to react to the general inanity than anything else. Similarly, I love Steve Zahn, reuniting with Black from the early ‘00s schlock that was Saving Silverman – in which they performed Neil Diamond songs. (Hey, guess what? There’s a much better movie you can watch on Christmas Day if you like Neil Diamond!) Zahn plays a fairly one-note, one-joke character, as Kenny, Doug’s eff-up friend who comes up with some of the worst ideas.
From the opening prologue, we know there’s a subplot involving local gold smugglers chasing after Melchior’s Ana, but that whole aspect of the film never really amounts to much other than to create more stakes for the group. I did appreciate what her character brought to the action portions of the movie, but she’s such an ancillary character and her departure from the film is done so matter-of-factly, it adds another “Why bother?” aspect to a movie full of them.
There isn’t much to say about the obviously CG-created snake from the movie’s title, but it just doesn’t have the same effect as the animatronic snake from the ‘90s movie, which was absolutely terrifying. This is one of those horror-comedies where it focuses more on the laughs than the scares, even if there are enough cheap jump scares one wonders whether that was Gormican’s intention. I could count on one hand the number of jokes that made me laugh – exactly two, and one of the gags was so puerile that I was quite embarrassed about how loudly I laughed at it. Otherwise, if you’ve seen the trailer, then you’ve already had the movie’s two most amusing moments already spoiled for you.
An attempted horror-comedy that never fully commits to picking its lane by creating something either scary or funny, Anaconda is so instantly forgettable, one wonders why anyone even bothered. If we’re lucky, the movie will do so poorly, the studio will never make the sequel threatened by the film’s ending.
Rating: 6/10
Anaconda opens on Christmas Day with previews on Christmas Eve (starting as early as noon!)
Awww. I wasn't, like, super-excited about this one or anything, but I was at least hoping it would be funny and worth a watch. It just sounds disappointing, though.