{"id":230472,"date":"2026-01-06T13:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T13:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/230472\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T13:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T13:48:08","slug":"anaconda-2025-review-a-regurgitated-mess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/230472\/","title":{"rendered":"Anaconda (2025) Review \u2013 ‘A regurgitated mess’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dissatisfied with their lives, film-loving friends Griff (Paul Rudd), Doug (Jack Black), Kenny (Steve Zahn) and Claire (Thandiwe Newton) head to the Amazon to shoot a spiritual sequel to their favourite movie, 1997\u2019s Anaconda. But mysterious stowaway Ana (Daniela Melchior), illegal gold miners and, of course, a massive snake soon get in the way.<\/p>\n

Remaking Anaconda<\/a> as a comedy about remaking Anaconda is an idea so brilliantly terrible, or terribly brilliant, it might have crossed the mind of The Studio<\/a>\u2019s increasingly desperate Matt Remick. And in another version of the movie multiverse it could \u2014 maybe \u2014 have worked.<\/p>\n

\"Anaconda<\/p>\n

Director Tom Gormican and co-writer Kevin Etten made 2022\u2019s exuberantly meta The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent<\/a>, so they must have seemed like a smart choice, and old hands Paul Rudd and Jack Black can wring laughs from just about anything. But this risky reboot presupposes quite a lot. There have been five Anaconda flicks since the good-bad original, but only one (2004\u2019s Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid<\/a>)\u202fhas troubled a cinema screen, and it\u2019s unlikely any of them are anyone\u2019s actual favourite movie. \u201cWho cares about IP?\u201d asks failed actor Griff (Rudd). \u201cLiterally everybody,\u201d answers frustrated wedding videographer Doug (Black). Yet outside of the Sony boardroom, is that really true?<\/p>\n

Lumbered with joke-light dialogue, low-stakes action and a rubbish CGI snake.<\/p>\n

Even the characters, who claim to have watched J.Lo\u2019s breakthrough film a punishing 30 times, don\u2019t seem especially well-versed in its lore. No matter, because as they head up river and into danger, what emerges is closer to Tropic Thunder<\/a>, albeit lumbered with joke-light dialogue, low-stakes action and a rubbish CGI snake. \u201cWe came out here to make Anaconda,\u201d says Doug, \u201cand now we\u2019re in it!\u201d They certainly are.<\/p>\n

With the male leads riffing on their familiar screen personas \u2014 Thandiwe Newton, as one of their friends, is given embarrassingly little to do \u2014 and gorgeous (Australian) locations, it all glides along smoothly. But the original had a certain cheesy, take-no-prisoners charm that\u2019s missing here, and the endless callbacks and cameos feel less like fan service than self-satisfaction. Depressingly, the most inventive scenes take place early on, in a cheapo creature-feature our heroes shot as kids. A film within a film about a film \u2014 how\u2019s that for meta?<\/p>\n

Boasting more star power than all the Anacondas put together, but noticeably fewer laughs, what could have been a fresh take on familiar material ends up a regurgitated mess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dissatisfied with their lives, film-loving friends Griff (Paul Rudd), Doug (Jack Black), Kenny (Steve Zahn) and Claire (Thandiwe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,270],"class_list":{"0":"post-230472","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-movies"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}