Director: Tom Gormican
Writers: Tom Gormican, Kevin Etten, Hans Bauer
Stars: Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Steve Zahn
Synopsis: A group of friends are going through a mid-life crisis. They decide to remake a favorite movie from their youth but encounter unexpected events when they enter the jungle.
The blockbuster comedy is a sort of lost art on the current cinematic landscape. Rarely nowadays does such a comedy exist on its own without being combined with another genre; the action comedy, the horror comedy, the “dramedy,” the list goes on and on. Yet, while Anaconda does have elements of all of these things, it feels more akin to a pure, unashamed comedy than anything else. It earns points there, at least in concept, but the film struggles to find any real footing along the way in execution.
Director Tom Gormican has now come close to making a good comedy twice. First, he flirted with quality with his Nic Cage-led The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, before moving onto this subsequent attempt at the exact same genre. Unfortunately for Gormican – in spite of his keen sensibilities for the genre – what didn’t work then, doesn’t work now. Namely, poor side characters and an overreliance on bits that have been thoroughly played out already.
On numerous occasions, Anaconda throws something at the audience that they’ve already seen before. For a movie that, narratively, is touting itself as a satirical champion of originality, the irony quickly opens an untreatable self-inflicted wound. Instead of playing like a straight sequel to the 1997 original of the same name, the new Anaconda supposes that movie’s existence within its own faux-realistic world.
Led by Paul Rudd and Jack Black, a group of amateur filmmakers set out to make their own version of a sequel on an incredibly low budget. That idea, especially given the motive of trying to avoid making a traditional, junky reboot, is a fun one. Again, that’s where Gormican scores most of his points. The movie just isn’t that funny, and for a comedy, no greater sin can be committed.
Now, there are a few running gags – most often spurred by the ever-electric Steve Zahn – that work well enough. It’s when the movie turns up the slapstick meter to 11 that the light finally starts to peek through a little. But, given that most of the runtime is spent prodding through flat character motivations and finding ways to conjure humor through that, the good stuff is unfortunately few and far between.
Especially for a comedy with the aforementioned duo, Rudd and Black, at the core, ‘Anaconda’ bears astonishingly little of either of their personalities. You’ll get the occasional Jack Black vocal inflection, and Rudd cuts the shoddy dialogue with silly physical humor at times, sure. More often than not though, Black is simply “Doug” and Rudd, “Griff.” The latter make a far less interesting pair than the performers who have made a career off of their own comedic sensibilities, at least to an extent.
To the film’s credit, it does look somewhat cool, sometimes. Gormican and his team light the jungle-bound setting, especially at night, in compelling ways and run enough hijinks through the trees to keep you at least relatively engaged. Anaconda isn’t a bad movie, necessarily, but it is an almost completely unnecessary and terribly unoriginal one.
This holiday season, there exists very little reason to catch this comedy in theaters. Unless you’re a massive fan of the original, Ice Cube, or both, Anaconda is a safe, forgettable skip. Those waiting on the grand return of comedy to the big screen will have to wait a little longer.
