Anaconda is the kind of self-referential franchise film that's (almost) silly enough to be entertaining, but for the most part, it simply coasts on the charm of its talented cast.
This "spiritual sequel" (as one of the main characters calls it in the film) to the 1997 original is the work of Tom Gormican, who previously directed the clever meta-comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, in which Nicolas Cage played a fictionalized version of himself as the washed-up movie star Nick Cage.
Director: Tom Gormican
Writers: Tom Gormican, Kevin Etten, Hans Bauer
Stars: Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Steve Zahn
I assume Sony was hoping Gormican and co-writer Kevin Etten would pull off a similar magic trick, but as is often the case with these things, the law of diminishing returns prevails.
Not that the new Anaconda is unwatchable, far from it. For the most part, it plods along at a slow pace, until it finally picks up speed when a cast member from Anaconda (1997) shows up to inject some urgency into the film. Hint: it's the actor responsible for the song with the line "My Anaconda don't want none," which is used several times throughout the movie. No, it's not J.Lo, although she does have a cameo, and I'm only revealing that because you have to wait until the end credits start rolling (and most of the people in the theater where I saw it had already left by then).
Like The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, the new Anaconda has an undeniable self-referential (or "meta") quality that is reminiscent of Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind (2008), another film starring Jack Black, or even J.J. Abrams' Super 8 (2011).
The story goes something like this: Paul Rudd plays Griff, a struggling actor whose greatest claim to fame is four episodes on the TV series S.W.A.T. After being fired from a small role in a medical drama, Griff leaves Los Angeles to visit his old friend, director Doug (Jack Black), for his birthday in their hometown of Buffalo, where the latter has a comfortable but unfulfilling job as a wedding videographer. At the party, Griff shows his friends and family an old VHS copy of The Quatch, a short film they made when they were thirteen, inspired by both monster movies and Scorsese films.
The next day, Griff and Doug meet up with two other old friends, cinematographer Kenny (Steve Zahn) and actress Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Griff tells them his plan: he's acquired the rights to his favorite childhood horror-comedy, Anaconda (1997), and now wants to travel with them to the Brazilian Amazon to make a low-budget remake.
So far, so good. The rest of the film, not so much. Besides the main cast, standout performances include Daniela Melchior as the elusive captain of their riverboat and Selton Mello as the animal wrangler Santiago, but as for the film as a whole: it's fairly entertaining, but for a comedy it doesn't have enough laugh-out-loud moments, for a monster movie there aren't enough snakes, for an action movie there aren't enough stunts or spectacular special effects, for a film for cinephiles it's not nerdy enough, and for a horror movie (which it clearly isn't!) it's not scary enough, according to this scaredy-cat.
Anaconda (2025) is held together by the charisma of its actors, who, frankly, have had more rewarding roles, although Steve Zahn steals the show with his portrayal of a recovering alcoholic who claims to be "sober the Buffalo way," meaning he only drinks beer, wine, and some light spirits, and only occasionally indulges in something stronger (but definitely not all of them). I can't, in good conscience, give this new Anaconda movie a passing grade, but it might be good enough to kill some time at the theater if the Avatar movie is sold out, and especially if you've already had a couple of drinks.
And since it's at least half the time silly enough to be entertaining, I'm giving it two and a half stars.
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