I won’t say this film has no merit or value, but for a film coming from the director of The unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, I think he missed the boat in the Amazon somewhere. This highly meta reboot/remake of the 90’s cult classic is not what you’d expect. that’s probably a good thing, as most remakes struggle to capture what, if anything, made the first film work. So instead of Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Steve Zahn, and Thandiwe Newton stepping into the shoes of Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz, Jennifer Lopez, and Jon Voight, they play fresh characters living in our world, where they all have disappointing jobs, never realized their dreams, and decide to do a remake of Anaconda, financed by Newton’s character. That is the plot.

What might have worked better, especially now having seen this and how this film has no idea how to justify Newton aside from having her pay for things, I could see the film being the actors playing versions of themselves, like in Massive talent, where Newton is tired of the projects she’s being offered, so she finances a remake of Anaconda for herself to star in, and gets Black, Rudd, and Zahn to join her. That would be more like Massive Talent, and I’d love to see Black and Rudd playing heightened versions of themselves, instead of whatever this is.

In this movie, they have no money, so they hire a snake handler and his pet anaconda to accompany them on a boat operated by a criminal on the run (Daniella Melchior), and hilarity is supposed to ensue. This is barely a horror comedy, and plays much more like a comedy, with a few bloody interactions. it is never scary, mostly silly, and fully reliant on charisma from Black and Rudd to make anything work. Some jokes do land, and Steve Zahn deserves more credit as he’s in as much of the film as the three “leads, However, Newton’s character isn’t really a specific type, she isn’t responsible for the comedy, or horror. She just exists. Melchior’s villain is chopped up in her development, as she seems to disappear when the film has no space for her, and her motivations for doing anything are kept incredibly vague. It’s pretty sad when Voight’s bad accent villain from the first film seems like a more compete villain.

The best parts are the cameos, rather unexpected, but perfect. There’s one just after the credits start that floored me. It seems like everyone wanted to do the next thing from the guy who helped to revive Nicolas Cage’s career with Massive talent, but he took a bigger budget, and went in a new direction. I’m just not sold on it working. I need more laughs from my comedies, meta or otherwise.

The audio description was mostly fine, but a couple of times, it gave the evil anaconda in this film a lot more personality, making it seem like it had a lot more thought going on, stalking, making choices, and such. I think at one point, the audio description said the snake was smiling, or smirking, and maybe it was, but that’s not appealing either way.

Your Anaconda won’t want none,because this ain’t got a plot, son.

Rotten: 4.9/10