Anaconda: The Trashy-Fun Reptile Movie We Deserve — & Need

SPOOFING THE SELF-SERIOUSNESS of any original action franchise from the 1990s is the only way to go, particularly in this social-media era where the meme-fication of nostalgia is a genre in itself; Jurassic World should be taking notes, but it’s too busy doing legacy cash-grabs. In terms of meta-reboots of cult horror hits, Anaconda is more inventive than the latest Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer and The Final Destination instalments. Needless to say, the 1997 creature feature starring Jennifer Lopez, Jon Voight and Ice Cube is the wonky ghost that haunts Tom Gormican’s creature comedy starring Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Steve Zahn and Thandiwe Newton. And needless to say, it’s a satire on film-making: a reboot within a reboot that reveals the sheer futility of reboots. Think The Studio meets Tropic Thunder (Jack Black double bill, anyone?) meets Scary Movie meets The Hangover meets…Anaconda? Either way, the worse such movies become, the better they feel. That’s a superpower.

The plot is straight from B-movie heaven. Doug (Black) is a failed film-maker who shoots wedding videos in Buffalo; his best friend Griff (Rudd) is a Joey-coded background actor in Los Angeles. They had planned to conquer Hollywood together as horror-movie geeks, but Doug backed out to be a normie, and Griff struggled his way into his late 40s. They reunite on Doug’s birthday, only for Griff to convince him and their other two high-school besties — Kenny (Zahn) and Claire (Newton) — to live their dream and shoot a gritty Anaconda remake (“spiritual sequel”) in Amazonian Brazil. Why such a specific project, you ask? Because Griff claims to have landed the rights of the book on which the 1997 hit was based. He essentially owns the IP, so off they go as an indie ragtag crew with a local handler named Santiago, whose pet anaconda will star in their film. Parallely, a gold-mining crook named Ana crashes their boat party on the river; she’s being chased by gun-toting men, so she segues into their adventure as an unlikely ally. Hers is not a necessary track, but what is necessary anyway? Before they know it, of course, the American crew finds themselves in the middle of a real Anaconda movie, where a mutant snake stalks, crushes and swallows all humans in its watery path (including a slick Sony Pictures crew shooting an ‘official’ reboot).

The film had me when one of the characters advises Griff to do “B-movies like The Legend of Bagger Vance”. I thought I was the only one obsessed with corny Will Smith and Matt Damon movies. There’s also the fact that so many movies about movies tend to riff on the madness of art (the chaotic shoot almost always results in something acclaimed), but Anaconda is self-aware enough to be an ode to the very mediocrity that birthed the original all those years ago. At no point does it pretend that Doug and Griff are talented guys who might make an award-winning blockbuster on their own terms. They remain two less-than-talented and creatively diminished guys who get a chance to relive the friendship dream that they had once passed on. It’s a midlife-crisis adventure for all four of them. So it’s very much a buddy comedy disguised as a Hollywood parody disguised as a creature thriller (that can’t keep a straight face — or fangs). 

WATCH HERE | The 1997 film, Anaconda, is available on Lionsgate Play, now part of your OTTplay Premium subscription.

The Adam Sandler-level slapstick humour helps. Some of the gags include the slow-mo ‘accident’ that kills the star of the remake, a pee-on-snake-bite moment where Kenny dramatically overcomes his “urinary stage fright” (fear of peeing in public), an unconscious Doug used as bait with a wild boar and dead squirrel attached to his body, and a climactic cameo by one of the film’s original stars. The funny part is that the big, bad CGI reptile itself keeps fighting for the spotlight. It doesn’t even have an ominous intro shot. It’s just unceremoniously employed as a character whose only job is to be a killjoy and remind everyone that the first one was a gory action flick. Every time it threatens to make the film a little scary, the tension is diffused by an inane set-piece or an over-the-top showdown on the boat. It’s trying to be the real deal and the all-business monster, but much to its chagrin, it seems to be trapped in the wrong genre. The bumbling humans keep turning their existence into a punchline. 

That’s the point of a great trashy movie; darkness stands no chance in a setting that’s too unhinged to care. There are no rules, just a bunch of storytellers desperate to finish telling their story at any cost. I don’t remember the last time I chuckled in a cinema hall alone — loudly, willingly, at a film and with it at once. God knows we need metaphorical failed snakes in a world full of literal and successful ones. And God knows we need terrible films within films rather than terrible films about films. If that’s a tongue-twister, think of the poor anaconda who’s waited decades to take revenge for its ancestors, only for some snooty cinephile to mistake it for a python. Or worse, the animated kinda-sorta-cobra politician from Shankar’s Nayak: The Real Hero (2001).