In Anaconda, Jack Black and Paul Rudd play two friends who decide to travel to Brazil to make an indie remake of the trash-classic 1997 Jennifer Lopez/Ice Cube snake movie—and end up with a fun, silly adventure that works as long as you set your expectations accordingly.
Again, set your expectations accordingly.
Objectively, this new Anaconda isn’t a great movie: the script is shaky, with pedestrian jokes and thrills. It relies heavily on the talented cast (which also includes Steve Zhan and Thandiwe Newton) to elevate the hit-or-miss material, while the snake action is slapdash at best.
But Anaconda has something many movies don’t: fun factor. It’s a welcome piece of mindless entertainment that makes the most of its mediocrity. Its humor isn’t inspired and yet I found several scenes quite funny (even if the trailers show some of the best gags, notably a sequence where they rope an allegedly dead Jack Black up with a dead pig and rit and use him for bait), if only because the cast makes them funny. Zahn is, unsurprisingly, a scene stealer, playing a well-intentioned if idiotic alcoholic. The story, with multiple human villains because why the hell not, is dumb, but the idea of a group of amateurs setting out to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget is a great one. The snake action is also sillier than it is scary, but in the context of the story it works well enough, escalating to a ridiculous climax that fits.
My girlfriend would disagree with my so-so praise: she thoroughly loved the movie. My daughter, who I foolishly took at age seven, was less impressed. She said it was equally “boring” and “scary” (and that I was “a bad parent for taking her,” point taken), though I question her critical judgment as she was covering her eyes half the time.
Whatever the case, Anaconda is more entertaining than it has any right to be. What it lacks in cleverness it makes up for in enthusiasm; Black, Rudd, Zahn, Newton and Selton Mello, who plays an emotional snake handler, seem to have had a blast making this silly movie, and that energy shines throughout.
Just set your expectations accordingly.
Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.