I didn’t realize that 1997’s original Anaconda, which featured Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez fighting a giant snake, was a film that many people had affection for. The new version of Anaconda, a meta-sequel involving a bunch of friends producing a low-budget remake of the snake adventure, strangely positions that film as a foundational text that inspired a generation of aspiring filmmakers, the way Star Wars or Jaws might’ve for people a couple of decades younger.
It’s silly and stupid, but driven by the comic energy of Jack Black and Paul Rudd, it drew some laughs out of me. And it’s almost certainly a better movie than a straight remake or sequel to Anaconda would’ve been.
Directed by Tom Gormican and written by Gormican and Kevin Etten, the new Anaconda lifts ideas from Tropic Thunder, Bowfinger, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, and Be Kind Rewind, the last of which itself starred Jack Black. Gormican previously directed the Nicholas Cage meta-movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, but this is a better execution of its ideas than the Cage film.
Black and Rudd play a couple of guys who made creative student films in their youth, and have moved on to unfulfilling careers on the fringes of showbiz, with Black a wedding videographer and Rudd a TV extra. Both actors are 56, which is late for cashing in on long-deferred show business dreams, and also doesn’t place them at the age the movie had them at when the 1997 Anaconda was released. But when Rudd claims to have obtained the rights to remake Anaconda, the two, along with old friends Claire (Thandiwe Newton) and Kenny (Steve Zahn), head to the Amazon to shoot a low-budget redo of the movie they all loved.
And, in a Tropic Thunder riff, they end up doing battle with a giant snake, and effectively re-enacting the plot of the real movie. A lot doesn’t add up. The economics of how much money they have, how much they borrowed, and what it must’ve cost to fly to the Amazon for a location shoot make no sense whatsoever. Flying to Brazil is expensive, and that’s before insurance comes into play. You’d think the other characters would be more skeptical of Rudd’s claims about obtaining the remake rights, that they’d know how to use Google, and would know that their favorite movie wasn’t really based on a Japanese novel.
Still, the action’s done fairly well. Selton Mello, the Brazilian actor, steals some scenes as a snake wrangler. The soundtrack repeatedly features a remix of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” that omits all the lyrics about big butts and just repeats the phrase “my Anaconda” over and over again. Ione Skye (!) plays Black’s wife, and a couple of familiar faces show up, which would be a spoiler if we didn’t see Ice Cube in all the commercials.
Anaconda won’t make any Top 10 lists, but it’s a nice alternative this time of year, if you’re not in the mood for Oscar-bait or three-plus hours of blue aliens.