With “Anaconda,” the Hollywood studio system comes closer than ever to devouring its own tail.
In 1997, Sony Pictures made “Anaconda,” a notoriously insipid creature feature starring Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube and a ferocious animatronic snake. The low-rent “Jaws” knockoff was conceived as a horror movie, but received by many as a comedy — the kind where viewers wound up laughing at the unintentionally corny dialogue and egregiously bad decisions made by characters in serious need of a bigger boat. So when it came time to reboot the franchise, the studio had a choice: Play it straight or lean in to the humour?
Enter Tommy Gormican, the mind behind 2022’s “The Incredible Weight of Massive Talent,” a mostly clever meta-comedy in which a good-sport Nicolas Cage played “himself,” actively parodying the sort of spoof-ready action movies that have kept him busy in recent years. There, the concept ultimately promised more than Gormican’s execution managed to deliver. Alas, that failing feels even more acute with “Anaconda” — an extended riff (with no real punchline) on what a soulless, sell-out practice it is for Hollywood to keep circling back to bottom-tier IP, when countless original ideas are still to be made.
Gormican’s “Anaconda” may be a one-joke exercise (make that two jokes, if you count the repeated sampling of the “My anaconda don’t want none” line from ’90s rap classic “Baby Got Back”), but it’s hard not to admire the nerve of whichever studio exec greenlit it. The script, which Gormican penned with Kevin Etten, spends a fair amount of time parsing whether it’s a reboot, a reimagining or a “spiritual sequel” to the 1997 movie, when in fact, it’s a ballsy all-of-the-above treatment of the material.
Instead of simply doing a pro-forma reboot, Gormican has crafted an elaborate industry satire in which an inexperienced gang of amateur filmmakers travel all the way to Brazil to relaunch the killer-snake franchise, only to find themselves terrorized by a giant CG snake in the process. The new “Anaconda” crew consists of Griff (Paul Rudd), a struggling actor who moved out to Hollywood only to languish doing bit parts on crap TV series, and Doug (Jack Black, in feisty “Jumanji” mode), who’s stuck back in Buffalo making overcomplicated wedding videos for couples who couldn’t care less about his “ideas.”
Griff still has feelings for childhood sweetheart Claire (Thandiwe Newton), who depletes both her PTO and personal savings to participate. On location, sparks supposedly rekindle, just not in any way the audience can detect. Also along for the ride is loose-cannon Kenny (Steve Zahn), an endearing dum-dum with addiction issues, who’s consistent about just one thing: Kenny can be counted on to blow every task they give him, starting with the hiring of exotic snake trainer Santiago (Selton Mello).
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On paper, this approach to “Anaconda” suggests a promising four-decades-later reunion of the sort of characters seen in “Super 8” or “Son of Rambow,” which celebrated the allure that blockbuster movies hold for junior movie geeks with access to basic filmmaking equipment. Gormican and Etten have found such an intuitive postmodern angle that another Jack Black movie immediately springs to mind: Michel Gondry’s “Be Kind Rewind,” in which video store clerks did kooky remakes of childhood favourites with limited means.
It’s the kind of “high” concept a bunch of stoners might kick around on a podcast (the way Kevin Smith spitballed the idea for body-horror prank “Tusk”). With such a premise, audiences can reasonably expect two things. First, it should be amusing to watch these knuckleheads struggle to make a professional-looking motion picture, especially if they have to contend with an unforeseen anaconda. And second, we want to see the end result, which should be so bad, it’s even funnier than the original “Anaconda.”
But Gormican appears to have been saddled with a slightly different agenda, one that’s less concerned with laughs: His “Anaconda” still has to function (at least in part) as a horror movie, which means the studio expects a few genuine suspense scenes, and at least a few characters should get eaten. Gormican’s solution is to invent a subplot about illegal gold mining in the Amazon, which provides a crafty, Lara Croft-y character named Ana (Daniela Melchior) to play tour guide, along with plenty of henchmen on her tail to feed that ’conda — all of which feels as cringey and unconvincing as the jungle scenes in 2024 howler “Madame Web.”
The jokes practically write themselves, which is why it’s surprising that there aren’t more of them. Apart from a lone wisecrack about Jon Voight’s bizarro accent in the original, the characters hold a reverence for the earlier “Anaconda” that undercuts the movie’s bite. One can only imagine how hilarious it would be to listen to Jack Black deliver a sarcastic, “Mystery Science Theater 3000”-style commentary on the 1997 film, but we don’t even see them watch it here. What is their “Anaconda” even about, other than giving these old friends — who’ve grown apart in the decades since making a DIY sasquatch movie in the woods near their home — a chance to catch up?
Most of the comedy is of the slapstick variety, including set-pieces with a live tarantula, a dead squirrel and a squealing wild hog. Meanwhile, the action is so clumsy as to suggest that studio execs should have engaged a second unit to handle the snake-attack scenes. The PG-13 rating might have squeezed the more shocking moments, including a fumbled jump-scare reminiscent of Samuel L. Jackson’s mid-sentence exit in “Deep Blue Sea.” But Gormican just doesn’t seem very comfortable with horror — or with killing off his characters, for that matter.
The movie could have really used some of that anarchic, industry-skewering “Tropic Thunder” energy. The only risk taken here was asking Sony — plus any surviving members of the original cast — to poke fun at themselves, which only goes so far when the film has no fangs.
Anaconda is out in Australia on Boxing Day.
From Variety US