I was 18 years old when the original Anaconda hit theaters, and boy, did I love it. The great thing about it, it was a terrible movie that a lot of really talented people, many in the early parts of their acting careers (J-Lo, Ice Cube, Owen Wilson, for instance), played as straight as possible. That made it even funnier. Unfortunately, it’s got a Hell of a lot more laughs than Sony’s new Anaconda, which aims to be a comedy and has the right cast for it, but is about as funny as being bitten by a poisonous snake.
Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Thandiwe Newton, and Steve Zahn lead the cast, and the idea behind this Anaconda is kinda brilliant. Imagine the DIY classic Be Kind Rewind mixed with a low-budget horror-comedy, and you have the idea. Black plays Doug, who once had the dream of being a big-shot Hollywood director, but as an adult he’s married (to Ione Skye!!!!!) with kids, and shoots lame wedding videos. Rudd is his longtime best friend, Griff, who left Buffalo to pursue his dream of acting, but other than a four-episode stint on S.W.A.T., he’s got nothing to show for it. Newton is their other friend, Claire, a lawyer and recent divorcee who used to date Griff. Zahn is their buddy, Kent, a pill-popping, hard-drinking loser who now claims to be “Buffalo Sober”, meaning just beer and alcohol.
Griff kicks things off by revealing that he’s acquired the rights to reimagine Anaconda, so he convinces his pals to set aside their lives and go with him to the Amazon to shoot the movie they’ve always wanted to make on the tightest of shoestring budgets. Turns out that banks aren’t just giving away cash to make movies anymore. While this production was always going to be trouble, it gets worse when they encounter violent gold smugglers and are pursued by an actual giant anaconda looking to give them all fatal hugs.
I went into Anaconda wanting to love it, but the script by Kevin Etten and director Tom Gormican is painfully weak on jokes. There were few laughs in the theater I was at, but the things that were funny seemed to appeal to all of us. Some of the best gags involved the actual nuts and bolts of making a movie, like the utter lack of funding for indie productions, or when Griff gets an accidental producer credit for being a complete moron. But the first half of the movie is actually kinda dull and laugh-free, with Black and Rudd seeming unaware of what the tone of the movie is supposed to be.
And that might have something to do with the meta aspects of the story. Gormican previously mined similarly meta territory with The Unbearable Weight of Immense Talent, another star-driven comedy that had a better concept than execution. Nobody in the cast are playing their characters to be as stupid as they’d need to be to fall into such a ridiculous situation. That’s why the best performances were either by supporting cast members, such as I’m Still Here breakout Selton Mello, who is a scene-stealer as overly-emotional snake handler Santiago. There are a couple of great cameos, too, that harken back to the original Anaconda, and those appearances work because they are played as stupidly as possible. Suicide Squad‘s Daniela Melchior is practically sleeping her way through a role that, if it were deleted completely, wouldn’t have changed a damn thing.
If Anaconda went balls to the wall silliness, as it somewhat tries to do in the final act, then the other issues could be overlooked. Instead, the humor is tame and forgettable. I had gone in hoping for something memorably edgy, like Tropic Thunder, but it’ll be tough to remember this movie existed in a few weeks. Do yourself a favor and pop in the original, which is a cult classic for a reason.
Anaconda is open in theaters now.
