Anaconda review: Jack Black and Paul Rudd deliver a surprising comedy — but its a bad surprise
When the trailer for Anaconda hit, I was giddy. At a glance, this seemed like a sublime elevator pitch: Two childhood best friends reunite to reboot the 1997 Jennifer Lopez/Ice Cube creature feature Anaconda. With Jack Black and Paul Rudd as the aforementioned besties, the promise of hilarious hijinks seemed sky-high. The zany trailer gave a taste of comedic chaos the filmmakers had in store, like a bumbling amateur film crew crossing paths with a real — and really monstrous — anaconda. It seemed like a perfectly wrapped gift for comedy lovers, just in time for Christmas.
I'm sorry to Grinch the vibe. But this Anaconda is not what we wished for.
Written by Kevin Etten and Tom Gormican, and directed by the latter, this haphazard reboot gets tripped up in clumsy attempts at cleverness. Far from keeping it simple and stupid, the screenplay wedges in a thriller subplot that's far from thrilling, and gives the female characters all the depth of a shot glass.
The male characters don't fare much better. Anaconda's hapless heroes natter on about what makes a great movie in passionate debates, so we know Etten and Gormican can talk the talk — but they can't walk the walk.
Anaconda (2025) is not the scrappy sister film to Be Kind Rewind.
Maybe you aren't coming to a 2025 action-comedy looking for a "spiritual sequel" to Michel Gondry's 2008, Jack-Black-fronted buddy comedy about two VHS rental store employees who dedicatedly make "sweded" versions of blockbuster films. But frankly, the premise and Black's casting had me hoping for this unconventional vibe: a celebration of determined filmmakers, doing their damndest with whatever they have at their disposal, turning junk into art. Instead, Gormican offers an action-comedy that's overstuffed with intrigue and underwhelming in-jokes.
Black stars as Doug McCallister, a lifelong Buffalo resident who once dreamed of moviemaking but now makes wedding videos for a living. ("It's a B, B+ life!") Meanwhile, his childhood best friend, Ronald "Griff" Griffen Jr., chased his dreams of movie stardom all the way to Los Angeles, only to wind up a struggling thespian whose greatest success is four guest appearances on S.W.A.T. But what if they could make their dream come true by rebooting Anaconda in the Brazilian Amazon?
Their childhood buddies, Kenny (a daffy Steve Zahn) and Claire (a woefully underused Thandiwe Newton), join them on this quest, employing a slippery snake handler (Selton Mello) and a curious riverboat captain (Daniela Melchior) to shoot their Anaconda with a live snake. Things go dangerously awry when they bumble into the territory of an enormous and aggressive anaconda. But while they're dealing with all of this, there's also a macho band of men chasing down their "badass" riverboat captain for reasons unknown — and ultimately reasons not all that interesting.
This is set up as a movie about friendship and the love of making movies with your friends. However, the amount of the film that actually features Doug and his friends making a movie is shockingly small. Where there could have been a DIY charm to seeing the footage, Gormican is solidly uninterested in showing the crew at work, offering one lazy montage of a successful shoot day.
As soon as the enormous snake shows up, they all forget they're making a movie about the giant snake. As much as Doug and Griff claim to be horror fanatics, it seems they've never even heard of found footage, much less understood the rule that you never stop shooting!
Jack Black is catastrophically miscast as the straight man.
What an absolutely bonkers choice Gormican makes here. You've got an actor whose comedic charisma is so intense that he's not only been the best part of movies like Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, The Holiday, and A Minecraft Movie (not to mention School of Rock, which he headlines), but also fronts a comedy-rock band known as Tenacious D. And you attempt to make him the level-headed guy, who's supposed to set up the punchlines for the zanier characters? It's not that Black can't manage that. It's that it's a waste of his dynamic energy and unparalleled comedic brilliance. Anaconda feels like it's constricting his potential.
He and Rudd, who has been a solid straight man in Role Models and I Love You Man, have an awkward chemistry. It's as if they're not sure who is supposed to hit the punchline, as the latter bops around like a Muppet. To his credit, Zahn thrives amid this chaos, as he's always been a character actor who can make the most of any situation. Here, he's that wildcard friend who insists he's "Buffalo sober," meaning he only drinks "wine, beer, and the light liquors." And Mello manages some silliness as the eccentric snake handler.
The rest of the cast, however, is so tangled in the convoluted plot that they have little opportunity to be funny or even amusing. Newton's role is so thinly written that Claire seems to exist only to be the object of Rudd's affections. Melchior's role is so dry and clichéd that she practically poses the whole of her screentime. That's infuriating, considering she's previously managed to be compelling in supporting roles in The Suicide Squad, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and American Sweatshop. Yet Gormican gives her more screentime and less to do!
Anaconda is too slick and stupid in the wrong way.
Look, the original Anaconda wasn't good. But it was fun. It understood what people wanted to see: famous people fighting a giant snake. This Anaconda has a setup that suggests Gormican knows what we want: Jack Black and Paul Rudd being goofy while making a silly snake movie. And yet, what we get is an overlong, convoluted action-comedy where neither the action nor the comedy is worthwhile.
It's the same issue I had with Gormican's The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which starred Nicolas Cage as himself. It's just not weird enough. Gormican's premises promise something next-level bonkers, but fail in his execution, which feels weird only in how safe they are.
His Anaconda can't compete with the wildest films from either lead's oeuvre, whether that's Jack Black's Nacho Libre, Be Kind Rewind, or Tropic Thunder, or Rudd's Wet Hot American Summer, Anchorman, or The 40-Year-Old Virgin. This Anaconda could have been a sensationally funny movie that explored the grimy glory of indie moviemaking or the comical challenges of creating art with friends. Instead, it's a meandering mess that wastes the cast's star power and the audience's goodwill.
I entered the theater optimistic, like I did 28 years ago when I saw Anaconda on a double date. Did that date go well? Absolutely not. But did I have a blast watching that wild movie? I did. And I've had a soft spot for it ever since. So, I was excited to see what could be done with a cast of characters who shared that enthusiasm for lowbrow cinema and a love of making things for the joy of making them. But this Anaconda doesn't have the spirit I'd expected. It's glossy, sloppy, and slick with CGI snakes, but there is no soul.
