Crew
Director – Tom Gormican, Screenplay – Kevin Etten & Tom Gormican, Based on the Film Anaconda (1997) Written by Hans Bauer, Jim Cash & Jack Epps, Jr, Producers – Kevin Etten, Andrew Form & Brad Fuller & Tom Gormican, Photography – Nigel Bluck, Music – David Fleming, Visual Effects Supervisor – Frazer Churchill, Visual Effects/Animation – Industrial Light and Magic (Supervisor – Ben Snow), Visual Effects – Fin Design (Supervisor – Justin Bromley) & Stage 23 (Supervisor – Jeremy Howdin), Special Effects Supervisor – Brian Cox, Production Design – Stephen Jones-Evans. Production Company – Fully Formed Entertainment/TSG Entertainment.
Cast
Jack Black (Doug McAllister), Paul Rudd (Ronald Griffin Jr.), Thandiwe Newton (Claire Simons), Steve Zahn (Kenny Trent), Daniela Melchior (Ana Almeida), Selton Mello (Santiago), Ice Cube (Himself), Rui Ricardo Diaz (Joao), Ione Skye (Malie), John Billingsley (Jerry), [uncredited] Jennifer Lopez (Herself)
Plot
Back in the 1990s, Doug McAllister and Ronald Griffin Jr. were teenage amateur filmmakers. In the present, Doug has an unfulfilling job as a wedding videographer, while Ronald is an actor with a stalled career. Ronald tells Doug that he has the obtained rights to the film Anaconda and proposes that they shoot a remake themselves. They raise what money they can, fly to Brazil and rent a riverboat and snake handler and set about shooting. However, Ronald accidentally throws the snake into the propeller. In their search for a replacement snake, the crew realise that they are being stalked by a real-life giant anaconda. At the same time, they get wound up in the activities of criminals running illegal gold-mining operations.
Anaconda (1997) was one of the first CGI monster movies. At the time it came out, it was fairly much ridiculed everywhere, while the subsequent superstardom of star Jennifer Lopez gained it a certain bad movie fascination. It received a theatrical sequel with the equally absurd Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid (2004) and then a string of video released sequels with Anaconda 3: The Offspring (2008) and Anaconda 4: Trail of Blood (2008), followed by the crossover Lake Placid vs Anaconda (2015). Anaconda here is a comedy remake of the original.
I can’t say that the idea of a comedy remake of Anaconda about people making a low-budget remake of Anaconda did much for me. It just seemed a little meta and too cutely ironic to me. Maybe it was just memory of Be Kind Rewind (2008) and thinking of Jack Black still back doing sweded versions of popular movies. On the other hand, I did quite like director/writer Tom Gornican’s previous film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022), so that gave me some hope.
But the film itself. I don’t know. I am not much of a fan of mainstream American comedy – indeed, the sort of films that Jack Black and Paul Rudd have made their careers out of doing. They’re on form and doing their thing here – Jack Black is always such a live wire presence that he carries most films he is in – but it also feels as though there is nothing that either of them are doing that is particularly stretching what they do. Thandiwe Newton has shown herself a phenomenal actress in recent years but she seems uncommonly subdued here in an underwritten role as the Girl Next Door grown up. The one who comes across the best is Steve Zahn in the role of the comically lovable stoner/screw-up.
All the elements seem to be gathered but I felt like Anaconda should have been a lot funnier that it is. Everything on the shoot seems to go comically wrong – there is even a crew turned up filming an actual studio remake of Anaconda – but none of it seemed to make me feel anything more than vaguely amused. I did have a laugh during the “whizz on me” sequence but that was about it.
The film does turn up cameo appearances from two of the actors from the original, Ice Cube and an uncredited Jennifer Lopez, both playing themselves. I don’t know if these add anything other than making for cute fannish callbacks to the original. All of this elevates the original to a classic status that it doesn’t deserve. Outside of Jack Black and Paul Rudd’s characters’ enthusiasm for it, the original Anaconda has a bad movie reputation, but that doesn’t seem to be one that Black, Rudd, Tom Gormican and the others here seem much attuned to tapping.
Trailer here