‘Anaconda’ Review: Paul Rudd and Jack Black Put the ‘Meh’ in Meta-Comedy
I’ll give Tom Gormican’s comedy reboot of “Anaconda” this much: It’s the fourth or fifth best movie in the “Anaconda” series. It’s behind the original “Anaconda,” obviously, because there’s no beating an all-star creature feature about documentarians Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube fighting giant snakes in the Amazon, or watching Jon Voight get regurgitated alive. Cinema might actually have peaked that day.
The first sequel, “Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid,” is a load of hogwash — about giant snakes protecting medicinal flowers from corporate goons (or something like that) — but it plays better than you’d expect. And you have to give credit to the fifth one, “Lake Placid vs. Anaconda,” because that’s the one where a giant crocodile throws a giant snake into the propellers of a hovering helicopter. I don’t care what you say, that’s awesome.
The question, I suppose, is whether the new meta-comedy “Anaconda” — starring Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Thandiwe Newton and Steve Zahn as indie filmmakers rebooting the franchise and getting attacked by real giant snakes — is better than the schlock it lampoons. That’s the trick, isn’t it? If you’re going to make a movie about how silly “Anaconda” is, and throw a lot of money at it and claim you’ve made a solid film, you have to prove you’re better than “Anaconda.” Or “Anacondas.” Or “Lake Placid vs. Anaconda.” Or at least “Anaconda 3: Offspring,” starring David Hasselhoff as a mustachioed animal hunter fighting CGI snakes in a Romanian science facility. If you can’t, the joke’s on you.
This new “Anaconda” is so busy talking about how silly it is to make a new “Anaconda” that it never actually makes a good “Anaconda.” Meanwhile, at least half of the schlocky, unironic straight-to-video sequels just went out there and made a low-budget “Anaconda” and got away with it. They were cheap and trashy but they were honest films, never pretending they were more than what they were, whereas Gormican’s “Anaconda” is big and expensive and never comes across as sincere. Not even sincerely silly.
The new “Anaconda” stars Jack Black as Doug, who dreamt of making monster movies but settled for a stable, ho-hum life as a family man and wedding videographer. His best friend Griff (Paul Rudd), who starred in all his home monster movies, tried to make it big in Hollywood, but he’s apparently a terrible actor, so his career is dead too. When Griff comes home for Doug’s birthday he proposes they make another movie together, like they always wanted to. And this time they should remake “Anaconda,” a film to which Griff now inexplicably owns the rights.
Don’t ask any follow-up questions about that, because Doug sure doesn’t. Instead he gets to work writing the script. His old cinematographer, recovering alcoholic Kenny (Steve Zahn), comes along for the ride, and so does their childhood friend Claire (Thandiwe Newton), to play Griff’s love interest and rekindle their old, real life flame. With a budget of about $40,000 they venture into the Amazon to film with a real giant snake, because that’s a good idea. Yup. A super great idea. Not. Tempting fate. At all.
So they get attacked by real giant snakes, obviously, and they spend the second half of the movie running around the forest doing “wacky” stuff like sliding a dead squirrel into Jack Black’s mouth and strapping a rotting boar to his back. How wonderful. There’s also a subplot about illegal gold miners that goes nowhere and isn’t fun. How exciting.
These characters are all incompetent fools, and that’s the joke, but it’s not a funny joke because their incompetence is generic. Their decisions don’t lead them into hilarious comedic situations, they lead them into obvious, flat gags, all with a laid-back pacing that does “Anaconda” no favors. It takes a very long time for the deadly giant snakes to appear, and by the time they do I was ready to watch everyone get devoured and move on with my life.
It’s genuinely hard to suss out what Tom Gormican, who also co-wrote the script with Kevin Etten (“The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent”), is even getting at. It’s not a celebration of low-budget genre filmmaking, or even the indie filmmaking spirit, because it treats most of these characters with very little dignity. Besides, the movie they’re making stinks. If it’s a satire of Hollywood, their targeting reticule is off, because this isn’t about out of touch studio executives.
If this really is just about giant snakes eating people — no more, no less — that’s fine, but it defangs all the meta-humor. And there sure is a lot of it. “Anaconda” claims practically screams that it’s about the charm of making movies outside the studio system, but it’s made within the studio system, starring big name actors, so that message never lands. If “Anaconda” had actually been made for $40,000 — no stars, all new faces — its pluckiness might have shined through and a message of some kind might actually have been made. Or at least, to quote Gormican’s movie, “Themes!”
Instead we get a movie where big name actors punch downward, at the helpless “Anaconda” movies, and at audiences who like “Anaconda” movies, and at all the low-budget filmmakers who work very hard to make good movies, even the schlocky ones. When all is said and done, it can’t hold a candle to all the genuine, ultra-low budget, unapologetic claptrap it’s lampooning. Well, except for “Anacondas: Trail of Blood.” They can’t all be winners. The new “Anaconda” proves that.
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