Anaconda (2025)

Two friends decide to fulfill their childhood dream of remaking their favorite movie about a giant killer Anaconda together (Anaconda '97), but once they reach the Amazon, life begins to imitate art, as an actual giant killer anaconda begins to hunt them through the jungle.

The original Anaconda film was released in 1997. A co-production between the U.S. and Brazil, it’s the story of a documentary film crew in the Amazon rainforest, who are following a snake hunter on the hunt for a legendary giant anaconda. It starred Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, and Owen Wilson, and a giant animatronic snake. It was a dumb film, but in a silly, pulpy way, that became a cult classic, mostly because it was dumb, but also because it played on cable a lot, in an era long before streaming, which meant that you had to watch what was on when you sat down, because that was basically your only option.

The idea for the the 1997 Anaconda apparently came about from a false memory that the original screenwriter Hans Bauer had of the original King Kong (1933), where King Kong fights a giant lizard, but Hans incorrectly recalled it being a giant snake. Couple that with some half-remembered nature documentary facts about how big anacondas can get, and Hans had himself a movie monster. The original script involved a modern day gold rush in Brazil that leaned heavily on some of the same ideas found in the 1948 John Huston directed and Humphrey Bogart starring film, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, while also featuring three giant snakes at once, an idea that, sans context, could also be a pitch for a porno. But in the end, this was all dropped for the documentary crew idea instead, so it was at least a little interesting to see that this new version of the film kind of went back to the gold rush angle.

In the end, Anaconda (1997) was nominated for six Golden Raspberry Awards (otherwise known as the Razzies) which are a parody Oscar-like award “honoring” the worst movies of the year. It’s actually a kind of a boring and myopic thing, but still, sometimes bad movies need to know that they’re bad, so whatever. Anyway, it lost in all six categories, thanks to the incredibly awful film, The Postman, starring Kevin Costner, and the equally awful film, Double Team, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman.

Now, 28 years later (not to be confused with the movies 28 Years Later or 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple), there's a new version of Anaconda. But this one isn’t is a remake, or a reboot, or really even a sequel. It’s about four childhoof friends who really loved the movie Anaconda, and now they want to remake it, which, to be fair, isn't a terrible idea.

So...

Doug McCallister is a bored wedding videographer who dreams of making arty horror movies. Ronald “Griff” Griffin is an actor in Hollywood, who's struggling to maintain even a semblance of a career, despite a brief stint on the show S.W.A.T.. As kids, they both loved Anaconda, and used to make movies together, but now those silver screen dreams are slipping away. When both of them simultaneously hit a bit of a middle-life rut, that’s when Griff tells Doug that he has obtained the rights to the original Anaconda. They decide to remake it.

Or reimagine it. Or make a spiritual sequel. Whatever. But on the cheap.

Roping in their other childhood friends and former teenage filmmakers, Claire Simmons, a dissatisfied divorced lawyer and also Griff’s childhood love, and Kenny Trent, who is mostly just happy to be there, they secure a small loan and travel to the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil in order to make their dreams come true.

They’re gonna make a low-budget indie version of Anaconda.

Once in Brazil, hijinks and danger ensues. But mostly hijinks.

The group picks up Santiago, their weirdo snake-handler, and Ana, a woman who claims to be the daughter of the boat they’re renting, but the audience knows that, due to having been seated at the start of the movie, she’s lying, and is on the run from some mysterious men with guns. Also, a giant snake ate her friend, but she doesn't mention any of this. The group heads up river and begin to make their movie, but not long after shooting starts, so does the trouble.

Griff, due to a very reasonable fear of giant snakes, accidentally kills Santiago’s semi-tame giant anaconda, so they venture into the jungle to find a replacement. Unfortunately, Santiago is eaten by a massive and murder-minded anaconda that as I previously mentioned, has already been shown eating people.

To answer Ice Cube's question from the first film... Yes, Cube, there ARE snakes out there this big.

Despite the fact that a crew member was just devoured, the show must go on, and they continue filming. Ana is super hot in her little shorts, so Doug decides to add her to their film, focusing mainly on her. This upsets Griff and the others, and rifts begin to form between the previously tightly bonded crew. To make things worse, they happen upon a Sony film crew, who it turns out, are also remaking Anaconda with the original cast of actors whose characters survived the first film, revealing that Griff was lying the whole time about having the rights to the original film.

After an argument, Griff storms off to join the other crew, more concerned with his own career than his friendship. But when he finds the set, he discovers it in ruins, as the anaconda has already killed or scattered most of the cast and crew.

It’s at this point that Ana, despite still being hot in her little shorts, reveals herself to also be evil, as she is an illegal gold miner. The mysterious men that she's on the run from turn out to be the police. She is apprehended by one of them, but Griff chooses that moment to return, and shoots the man, assuming him to be a villain. Ana kills the officer, and then makes the friends gather up gold for her, and things look pretty dire. Luckily, Claire is able to disarm Ana using Chekov’s head-butt, a move they had all discussed earlier in the film. Then the anaconda appears and drags Ana into the river, allowing the friends to escape. Thanks, Anaconda!

Although I will say, for me personally, the viewer... I really hate that none of them even try to run off with at least one bag of gold.

Anyway, now the friends are lost deep in the Amazon jungle, running from illegal gold miners, not to mention a giant anaconda, all as they try to finish their movie before Sony can reboot the franchise. Unfortunately, as they try to make their way home, Doug is suddenly swallowed whole by the anaconda. The others escape, understandably believeing him to be dead, especially after they later discover his lifeless body. With no other choice, they decide to use Doug’s corpse as bait to distract the anaconda, so that they can make it across a wide field to the river and the boat that is waiting there for them, but it turns out that Doug isn’t dead, and he awakens, confused, strapped to a dead pig, with a dead rat in his mouth, as the anaconda approaches.

He narrowly escapes, using the power of wacky comedy.

The friends stumble on the wrecked film set, and manage to avoid the anaconda, thanks to a timely intervention by professional gangster rapper turned actor, Ice Cube, who chases off the beast with some flare guns and harsh language, before leaving the friends to go rescue Eric Stoltz. The friends attempt to kill the snake with pyrotechnics in a cacophony of explosions and wacky running about. But when that fails, Griff blows up the big snake with some propane tanks and a flare gun gifted unto him by Ice Cube himself, and then Doug delivers the final blow, using Checkov's trophy, which had been given to him by one of his unnamed but precocious children in the film’s first act, and had apparently been in his pocket the whole time...?

In the end, the group finishes their film, but cannot secure theatrical distribution as they don’t have the rights. And also, Sony sent them a cease-and-desist letter, so they are only able to show it once. But it all works out, as Griff re-lands his role on the show S.W.A.T., and also marries Claire. Meanwhile, Doug is visited by none other than Jennifer Lopez–who very nearly appears to be somewhat like a likable human being–and she invites him to direct a new attempt to reboot Anaconda.

Meanwhile, deep in the jungle, most likely horribly injured and alone, miles away from any medical aid, Santiago is revealed to be alive, but y'know... in a funny way.

Despite clearly being a Frankenstein’s monster of clashing tones, welded-together reshoots, and unplanned scenes of pure riffing, all of which was spliced together into the semblance of a story in post, Anaconda (2025) is… fine.

It’s less dependent on meta-jokes than I expected it to be, and it’s not even going for intentional camp the way that I expected—which is good, because intentional camp is always bad—and there’s only a little bit of Hollywood inside baseball, so that's all good, but in the end, it’s still only kinda funny.

There’s funny bits for sure. The extended sequence where they believe that they need to pee on Jack Black's leg because of a spider-bite, but Paul Rudd already went and Thandiwe Newton is not willing to show them all her goodies, so that means only Steve Zahn can do it, but he's really pee-shy and has to be coached and reassured, and the moment of pure triumph as they celebrate him overcoming his fear as he pees all over Jack Black is really funny. So is the out-of-control swearing in their childhood movie, which is explained away because they were also big fans of Goodfellas as kids. There’s a bunch of little moments of interaction between the friends that really is funny. In fact, the best parts of the film are when the cast is just playing around with each, as they are clearly having a good time making the film. The problem is, whenever the movie focuses on the actual plot, things start to get pretty bogged down. I mean, Fitzcarraldo this is not.

Fitzcarraldo (1982) is an epic German adventure film directed by cinematic legend, and enemy of the Mandalorian, Werner Herzog. It stars Klaus Kinski as an opera-loving Irishman who is obsessed with building an opera house in the Peruvian jungle. To finance it, he must transport a steamship over a mountain in order to access a rich rubber territory, a feat that the film famously depicts without any special effects, actually dragging a steamship up and over a mountain, one of the many insane moments in what is known as a famously difficult production. Fitzxarraldo is perhaps the definition of ambitious, single-minded film-making, and incredible film to watch.

But I digress…

Writer/Director Kevin Etten’s previous film was The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, starring Nicolas Cage as Nicolas Cage, and Pedro Pascal as NOT Pedro Pascal, and it was a hilarious commentary on celebrity and the industry and Nic Cage himself, and I loved it. That said, Etten also wrote Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, which was… astoundingly bad. ASTOUNDINGLY bad. So there’s some ups and downs in his career, some strikes and gutters, as they say, and you can make of that as you will. My point in bringing it up though is Anaconda (2025) really does seems like Etten returning to the same well as The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and trying and failing to get a second bite at the apple, mostly because the zany energy and self-referential comedy that made the first film work just isn't present in the second, despite a really funny cast.

Still... if we're being honest, this isn’t very surprising, right?

When was the last time one of these “big name funny man” in a high concept studio comedy was actually funny all the way through? When was the last time that one of these Big Star Comedies didn't just end up like a typical Saturday Night Live episode, meaning... it has one or two legitimately funny moments, but otherwise is mostly just a tepid, slow, safe, and very middling “comedy” that mostly overstays its welcome until it eventually peters out to a stop.

Really, the biggest surprise for me was that Ione Skye is in this film.

Before now, I only really remembered Ione Skye for being what always felt like the oddest choice for the female lead in Cameron Crowe's 1989 film, Say Anything, where John Cusack, starring as Lloyd Dobler, first said these two classic lines…

One…

“I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed.”

And two...

"Kickboxing. Ever heard of Kickboxing, sport of the future? Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Benny "The Jet" Urquidez, Murray Smith. Some of the champions of the sport? I can see by your face, no."

Lloyd was a huge dumbass, of course, but that's unavoidable when you're living as a lovestruck teen deep within suburban Chicago in the 80s. I forget my point here. Anyway, Say Anything is the only Cameron Crowe movie worth a shit.

I also remember Ione Skye because Beastie Boy Ad Rock was of course down with the Ione, listen to this shit because both of them is boney, got to do it like this, like Chachi and Joanie, because she's the cheese and he’s the macaroni. But then… I remembered that they broke up, and when I looked up why, I found out that the reason they got divorced was because she cheated on him with another woman. What a rollercoaster down memory lane, huh? I mean, you stop paying attention for a minute… Anyway, before now, I had thought she had disappeared years ago, but apparently she’s been in a ton of stuff in the intervening years, a ton, it’s just that I have never noticed her before now.

But again… I digress.

Anyway, Anaconda (2025) is fine. That's it. Fine. Fine, as in “meh.”