A Tale of Two Snakes (Or, One Film, Two Very Different Heads)
Reviewing a movie like the new Anaconda reboot is a lot like encountering a mythological hydra: for every head that finds something to enjoy, there’s another head right next to it, hissing a completely different opinion. It seems only fitting that a film about a giant serpent would leave critics with a case of split personality. In this corner, we have Hope Madden, offering a measured, slightly disappointed sigh that the comedy wasn’t tighter.
And in the other corner, likely trying to bite Hope’s head off, we have Jim Mcleod, who looks like he just drank a gallon of venom and is ready to spit it back at the screen. So, does this Anaconda charm its prey before a gentle squeeze, or does it just lie there like a boring, expensive hose? Let’s consult the two heads of our reviewing hydra and see which one you should listen to. Our advice? Read on, but maybe keep some aspirin handy for the impending two-headed critic headache.
Anaconda
A Horror Movie Review by Hope Madden
Upon first seeing the trailer for Anaconda, the Jack Black/Paul Rudd spiritual sequel to the 1997 JLo vehicle, my husband George said, “This will either be incredibly funny or unwatchable.”
I banked on the first. How could this lose?! Not only because of the upbeat comedy gold of Black and Rudd, but forever favorite Steve Zahn, plus Thandiwe Newton classing up the joint. With Tom Gormican, the madman behind The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, co-writing and directing, it seemed like Anaconda couldn’t go wrong.
Anyway, I wouldn’t call it unwatchable.
Black, Rudd, Zahn and Newton were high school besties, brought together again by a dream: to make a reboot/sequel/reimagining of the giant snake movie they’d watched dozens of times when they were young and idealistic.
It’s a funny premise!
One script, a lead on a snake handler, and 42 grand later, the friends head to Brazil to shoot this thing and salvage something of what they’d hoped to be when they grew up.
There are some funny bits. Selton Mello is joyously weird as Santiago, the snake handler. Cameos, descriptions, and bits of dialog from the original Anaconda inject a bit of mischievous fun. I will be using the term “Buffalo sober” in my future.
But as inarguably charming as this cast is, it can’t elevate the many stretches of film without a joke. Though lots of scenes are humorous, very few are laugh-out-loud funny. Both Rudd and Black fall back on schtick and timing to make up for the spare comedy of the script, and Newton is given nothing at all to do for 99 minutes.
Every scene goes on a beat or two too long, it takes the film forever to get to the jungle, and too little happens once we’re there. The fact that the film owes almost as much to a classic Black comedy Tropic Thunder as the original Anaconda only leaves you longing for something funnier to happen.
It’s watchable. It’s even mildly entertaining. But it felt like it could have been more.
Anaconda 2025 Squeezes the Life Out of Jack Black, Paul Rudd, and Your Patience
Sony’s latest attempt to cash in on nostalgia, Anaconda 2025, isn’t a reboot, a reimagining, or a spiritual sequel. It’s a cinematic taxidermy project, stuffing the skin of a so-bad-it ’s-good 90s creature feature with the limp, meta-commentary of a film student’s first satire. Directed by Tom Gormican, this so-called action-adventure comedy horror film stars Jack Black and Paul Rudd as childhood friends who try to remake their favourite movie only to find themselves in a real monster mash.
The premise might be ripe for a raucous action-comedy, but this meta-reboot of Anaconda can’t detach its jaws wide enough to swallow so many conflicting tones. The result is a movie that feels less like a thrilling jungle expedition and more like being slowly, agonizingly constricted by a giant, unfunny snake for 99 minutes.
You can almost see the pitch meeting. “It’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, but with a rubber snake!” Gormican, following his Nicolas Cage meta-comedy, applies the same self-congratulatory formula to a different dusty IP. The film’s core is an admittedly sweet-natured message about creating art with the people you love. But that message gets drowned in a swamp of Hollywood inside jokes that land with a thud audible over the generic Amazonian soundscape.
The characters spend their time passionately mulling over the “theme” of their movie, patting themselves on the back for identifying basic screenwriting concepts. It’s satire that forgot to be funny, a film about making a movie that fails to be compelling itself. When a rival, official Sony Anaconda reboot crew shows up and gets slaughtered, it’s less a clever jab at the industry and more a baffling admission of the film’s own cynical emptiness. Who is this for? It strays too far from the B-movie charm of the 1997 original to please its fans, and its humour is too lazy and referential to work on its own terms.
This film assembles a genuinely talented comedic roster and then gives them nothing to work with. It’s a crime scene of wasted potential.
Casting Jack Black as the “creatively unfulfilled” straight man, Doug, is the film’s first fatal strike. Black, for this reviewer, is a perfect one-trick pony. Once you have seen one performance from Jack Black, you have seen them all. He’s playing the worrywart, the sensible one. It’s like using a volcano to power a desk lamp. His character’s passion is told, not felt. All that chaotic energy he’s known for is forced into making hilariously elaborate wedding videos we only hear about, leaving him handcuffed for most of the runtime. Watching him navigate a midlife crisis is about as exciting as watching someone fill out a spreadsheet.
Paul Rudd’s natural charisma has survived worse. But not this. As Griff, the D-list actor with delusions of grandeur, Rudd is stuck doing a one-note pouty-faced jealousy routine that grows stale in the first act. The script asks him to be the unlikable, lying friend who drags everyone into danger, and even Rudd’s patented charm can’t make that land. You keep waiting for the movie to let him be funny, to give him a moment. It never really comes. After this, the idea of sitting through another one of his comedies feels like a chore, not a treat.
Thandiwe Newton, an actor of great depth, is given the personality of a cardboard cutout labelled “divorced lawyer and former flame”. Steve Zahn, as the bumbling cameraman Kenny, manages to steal a scene or two (the infamous “pee-shy” gag is the film’s one moment of inspired, lowbrow chaos). But his character’s struggle with sobriety is treated as a lazy punchline rather than a real arc. Daniela Melchior flounders in a pointless, forgettable subplot about gold miners that feels like desperate padding to reach a 90-minute runtime.
Let’s be clear: the original Anaconda is beloved for its schlocky, sincere B-movie antics and its gloriously rubbery, practical snake. This reboot ditches all that for weightless, uninspired computer graphics. The attacks are repetitive, using the same underwater-constriction shot repeatedly. There’s no terror, no sense of awe. The snake is just a pixelated plot device. The film is rated PG-13 for violence, action, and strong language, but the chills are non-existent. It’s toothless. It wants to be a horror-comedy but fails at both. The jokes impair any tension, and the snake-based tension is too dull to be impaired.
Even the cameos, a staple of this meta-genre, feel like desperate grasps for relevance. The trailers already spoiled the inspired one, and a later, painfully unfunny cameo will make you wonder what anyone was thinking. A mid-credits scene with Jennifer Lopez is a needless afterthought, a final wink that lands like a dead fish.
Anaconda 2025 is the cinematic equivalent of a snake shedding its skin: what’s left behind is a brittle, empty, and vaguely unpleasant shell. It’s a waste of a clever premise, a waste of a stellar cast, and a waste of your time. It’s a movie, so unsure of what it wants to be, scary satire? Heartfelt buddy comedy? Jungle adventure? that it ends up as nothing.
It’s not “so bad it’s good.” It isn’t good. The $45 million budget produced $88.4 million at the global box office, proving that star power and nostalgia can still sell tickets. But it can’t manufacture soul or laughs. This anaconda doesn’t just choke its victims on screen; it methodically squeezes every ounce of fun out of the theatre, leaving you with a feeling of cold emptiness and a newfound reluctance to watch another Jack Black or Paul Rudd comedy for a very long time. Stick to the 1997 original. At least that snake had personality.
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