Directed by: Tom Gormican
Starring: Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Steve Zahn, Thandiwe Newton, Daniela Melchior
Call Anaconda a reboot, a remake, or a reboot within a remake, but don't call me if they make Anaconda 2. It's not that Anaconda is terrible. It's simply routine and uninspired despite Jack Black's and Paul Rudd's best efforts. I don't recall any groundswell for an Anaconda remake, etc. but here it is anyway.
Anaconda stars Black and Rudd as Doug and Griff, lifelong friends from Buffalo who team up to reboot Anaconda "indie-style" in the jungles of the Amazon. Doug films wedding videos but storyboards them as if he were shooting a horror film and Griff is a struggling actor who scores bit parts on TV shows. Griff tells Doug and his other friends Kenny (Zahn) and Claire (Newton) that he owns the rights to Anaconda, which they believe and start going to work.
One mistake of Anaconda is how the movie Doug and Griff are making doesn't seem indie at all. I reflected on Dolemite Is My Name (2019), in which Ray Ray Moore (played by Eddie Murphy) decides to make a low-budget film which was poor quality, but teemed with the energy of a man trying to reverse his fortunes. Any positives that can be gained from Anaconda is that we're rooting for this group to change their own lives, but the movie they're filming should've been Ed Wood-light. The process should've been the story, but instead we're treated to boring subplots involving illegal gold miners and a massive snake which terrorizes the region. I wanted to tell these tangents that they're in the wrong movie and belong in a different one.
There is one funny line in which Kenny discusses being "Buffalo Sober", which means that he sticks to beer and wine only, with occasional forays into "not hard" liquors. The movie doesn't build on that, but instead relegates the funny Zahn to a footnote.
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