Anaconda Review: This Anaconda? Don't Want None

I am generally a total sucker for a meta narrative. When executed properly, I enjoy the inherent cleverness of the approach, with the work itself being used to comment on the work, and it can be a wonderful way for artists to explore and examine the creative process. From books about writing books to movies about making movies, I’m easily delighted by both the insight that can be brought to light and the parody that pokes fun at the various roadblocks involved.

That in mind, director Tom Gormican’s Anaconda should be a perfect fit for my sensibilities. The world truly doesn’t need a new sequel to the 1997 horror flick starring Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Owen Wilson and Jon Voigt, but if it’s going to happen, why not make the movie about how silly it is to make a new Anaconda movie? Having the film headlined by a pair of comedic heavyweights in Paul Rudd and Jack Black theoretically should have led to the spinning of gold. The sad truth, however, is that it’s a work that never manages to come close to living up to its potential, as it’s instead a muddled mess that is neither a successful commentary nor able to properly juggle the comedy and snake-driven horror to make it entertaining.

The movie aims to be a kind of IP-driven blend of Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder and Frank Oz’s Bowfinger, but it comes up empty in regards to having anything real to say about moviemaking and both the fun and drama are undercut by an inability to create any kind of substantial stakes.

Written by Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten, who previously brought us the “Nic Cage playing Nic Cage” comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Anaconda’s protagonists are Griff (Paul Rudd) and Doug (Jack Black): two childhood friends who have become grown despondent in their middle-aged lives, with the former struggling to find work as an actor living in Los Angeles, and the latter finding his creative desires unsatisfied by his work as a wedding videographer in Buffalo, New York. The two men are professionally stuck, but they discover a path toward becoming unstuck when Griff delivers the news that he has managed to acquire the rights to Anaconda – a favorite film of theirs from growing up – and they decide to make a sequel.

With their friends Claire (Thandiwe Newton) and Kenny (Steve Zahn) coming along for the ride as Griff’s co-star and the cinematographer respectively, the pals fly down to the Amazon to make their movie on a shoestring budget. Things go swimmingly initially, but issues begin to stack – first when there is a violent incident that leaves the production without a snake to film, then when they become accidentally embroiled in a local illegal gold mine operation, and then when they find themselves terrorized by a monster serpent hunting them in the jungle.

Anaconda simply tries to do too much, and it doesn’t do anything particularly well.

I am a cinephile who is will always give a film its entire runtime to try and deliver something entertaining or thought provoking, but Anaconda offers wafts of trouble from its very first scene – which is set in the Amazon and introduces Ana (Daniela Melchoir), a woman in some sort of vague trouble who is is pursued by men with guns, and then said men get attacked by the titular reptile. As the tablesetter for a comedy, it doesn’t feature any jokes or laughs; it’s so cryptic as to be more confusing than intriguing; and all of the action with the snake is so fast, dark and clearly CGI that it fails to be at all scary. It’s unclear from the jump what the movie is trying to do… and that never really goes away.

There is a high concept plot buried in Anaconda about two old friends trying to reconnect and resurrect their dreams by making a movie together, but the film gets so lost in stacking up problems for the characters that nothing is able to build up to something comedically or dramatically satisfying. It has the overall cadence of a movie that was constructed on the fly, and it’s therefore way more frustrating than humorous when there is a bit where Doug explains how no modern Hollywood production starts shooting with a completed script.

The PG-13 rating hampers Anaconda in multiple ways

While the scattershot construction is the movie’s greatest flaw, one also leaves it with the feeling that it at least would have had greater potential if it had been equipped with a R-rating instead of PG-13 (which this decision was made because of the 1997 original’s rating or the kid-friendly appeal of Jack Black is unclear, but it’s a negative either way). Horror comedy works best when it gets to play in extremes, but everything here is made to feel beyond tame. It’s rather stunning that there is not a single ounce of excitement, either fear or funny-based, conjured in any of the film’s snake action – though that is also in large part because the visual effects are, to be blunt, awful.

One senses a lot of fun was had making Anaconda, but that fun doesn’t translate to the screen.

Watching the movie, it can be said that it looks like the stars had a blast making it, as you can occasionally catch Paul Rudd and Jack Black with an on-the-verge-of-breaking smirk in response to what was clearly an improvised line from their scene partner… and a weird, small piece of you feels jealous as they have more fun in the experience than the audience. Anaconda is built on a strong premise but it does absolutely nothing with it, never committing to any of its (sometimes fun) ideas and instead opting to zag off in new directions. It’s a strange thing to be disappointed by a work that never really garnered much in the way of big expectations, but that’s what it does nonetheless.