This 'Anaconda' don't know fun
Making Jack Black a movie star was a huge mistake. I understand that he’s a living cartoon character and that works for kid-friendly movies to an extent (yes, I like “The School of Rock”), especially when animated. (Bowser.) But he was abysmal in “Minecraft” and is a massive liability to “Anaconda,” which wouldn’t have been good with someone else but at least wouldn’t have had a gaping hole where the main character was supposed to be.
Black plays Doug, who dreamed of being a big-time director but when his childhood pal Griffin (Paul Rudd) left Buffalo for L.A., Doug bailed on the friends’ linked plans. Decades later Griffin’s getting fired from roles as Doctor #3 and Doug’s making engaged couples uncomfortable with his zany ideas for their wedding videos. For very contrived reasons, the two reconnect (along with the rest of their adolescent gang, played by Steve Zahn and Thandiwe Newton) and, somewhat amusingly, head to the Amazon to shoot a low-budget reboot of the titular, terrible 1997 film, which they still love for extremely vague reasons.
Obviously, things go awry, and the fact that the filmmaking team on screen knows they’re making a movie (“Dude, you could be the white Jordan Peele” is a line that someone really says) sadly bleeds into the performances, with just Zahn finding the right tone without going overboard. Plus, the self-awareness only goes so far, with these supposed movie buffs having no sense of all the times (“Tropic Thunder” and “The Lost City,” to name just two) a fake situation got real for creative types not used to braving legitimate danger. Worse is that the allegedly lifelong friends never feel bonded and the CGI snake never seems like a threat that actually exists, so every action sequence is just tension-free mugging and shouting. (I know you can’t put a person in a snake costume, but the effectiveness of “Primate” should mean the end of artificial junk like this. It won’t, but it should.)
Fortunately there are a couple decent lines and ideas sprinkled throughout, and even a miscast Paul Rudd is still appealing. And the new “Anaconda” actually sparks a compelling layer it never pursues — that certain elements of the past, be it a movie we loved as a kid or an old friendship, sometimes can retain a twinkle that modern examination doesn’t always validate without a good update. (What if the characters actually reckoned with the original’s mediocrity or with their adult frustrations in ways that weren’t straight out of a sitcom? Why do certain feelings age well or not, and what do we do about this?) But the photo above probably didn’t suggest to anyone that we’re in deep waters here, and director/co-writer Tom Gormican (“The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” “That Awkward Moment”) has already carved out a career of movies that seem like they could be good-ish but then aren’t.
The original was memorably bad; the new “Anaconda” is unmemorably bad, which is arguably worse.
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