{"id":269279,"date":"2026-01-29T01:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T01:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/269279\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T01:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T01:07:08","slug":"stream-it-or-skip-it-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/269279\/","title":{"rendered":"Stream It or Skip It?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Rudd and Jack Black plays guys remaking Anaconda in this remake of Anaconda, appropriately titled Anaconda (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video<\/a>). Got that? So, Today I Learned that Anaconda is an expansive franchise consisting of the 1997 original with Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube and Whatever the Hell Jon Voight\u2019s Accent Is<\/a>, as well as four sequels, a Chinese remake and then this new one, a meta-movie about people who love Anaconda so much they decide to make their own version of Anaconda. Now, do people who love Anaconda so much they decide to make their own version of Anaconda actually exist? Nah. But if anything needs to be poked fun at these days, it\u2019s the relentless hovering specter of IP, so maybe this new Anaconda will justify its existence.<\/p>\n

ANACONDA<\/a>: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Gist: We open with some violent dithering in the Brazilian jungle involving a character named Ana (Daniela Melchior), whose name I think is a joke. The credits say her last name is Almeida, but, I mean, Conda was right there, wasn\u2019t it? Perhaps this movie is above such jokes, but the following 90-odd minutes proves otherwise, so we\u2019ll chalk it up as a missed opportunity for a lame unlaugh. Next we hear Jack Black\u2019s voiceover \u2013 it\u2019s a dead-serious heavy-duty hardcore-film-director description setting the scene\u2026 for a wedding video! The Black character, Doug McCallister, has clearly seen his dream of being a big-time moviemaker compromised all the way down to working for a guy who really wishes Doug would tone it down and shut up and make the fluffy nuptials video for the happy couple. Doug\u2019s got a family to support after all, including a wife played by Ione Skye, so hey, shout out to Ione Skye, eighth-billed in Anaconda Twenty Twenty-Five, and make sure you feel a little sad about that.<\/p>\n

Doug isn\u2019t the only sad-sack sucko-tryhard in this movie, either. His bestie from way back is Griff (Rudd), a Hollywood resident who works at a big-box home-improvement emporium when he isn\u2019t bragging about his four-episode arc on S.W.A.T. a while back. After he\u2019s canned for treating a one-line cameo as Doctor No. 3 like an Oscar clip, Griff goes back home to Buffalo to attend old buddy Doug\u2019s surprise birthday party. They reminisce over The Quatch, a bigfoot movie they made with friends Kenny (Steve Zahn) and Claire (Thandiwe Newton) when they were kids who thought it was super-cool to drop prolific F-bombs in a creature feature to show their heavy Scorsese influence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Griff blurts out that he acquired the rights to Anaconda for basically some pocket lint, and since nobody\u2019s overjoyed with their creative lot in life, the four old friends scrape together four figures (six if you count the digits on the right of the decimal point) for a trip to the Amazon, where they\u2019ll fulfill their dreams with a \u201cspiritual sequel\u201d to the giant snake movie. They\u2019re also inspired by another chunk of pop culture from the late \u201990s Paula Cole\u2019s \u201cI Don\u2019t Want to Wait,\u201d specifically the lyric that goes \u201cI don\u2019t want to wait\/For our lives to be over to make a \u2018spiritual sequel\u2019 to Anaconda,\u201d although I think I may be paraphrasing.<\/p>\n

So they venture to darkest Brazil, renting a normal-sized anaconda from a snakehandling weirdo with a Tommy Wiseau accent, Carlos (Selton Mello), and hopping a boat that belongs to Ana Whose Last Name Should Be Conda. As they shoot scenes and get coverage and roll sound and debate the need and method of headbutting during an action sequence, it seems like some unsavory types are pursuing Ana, thus somewhat explaining that cold open. Further complicating their adventure into the heart of darkness is an anaconda that could swallow the Burj Khalifa. Neither of these complications is particularly helpful in the pursuit of cinematic glory, but Jack Black and Paul Rudd never play guys who just give up on things, do they?<\/p>\n

\"ANACONDA, Photo: \u00a9Columbia Pictures\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Director Tom Gormican and his co-writer Kevin Etten are trying to be the new kings of the meta-movie, having made Nicolas Cage-playing-Nicolas Cage movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent<\/a> \u2013 which was also kind of a soft dud, but a bit funnier.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Performance Worth Watching: Newton barely registers here (blame the writing), and Zahn, Rudd and Black all play to type. Tie goes to the Rudd-er though, because his shtick seems to have aged a little bit better.<\/p>\n

Sex And Skin: None.<\/p>\n

\"Where Photo: \u00a9Columbia Pictures\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Our Take: \u201cWhen you can\u2019t breathe, you can\u2019t scream\u201d is the tagline of the OG Anaconda, a so-bad-it\u2019s-good sort-of-classic of crap cinema. The other thing you can\u2019t do when you can\u2019t breathe? Laugh. Everyone here flails \u2013 especially Black, in his trademark overzealous fashion \u2013 enough to suck the air out of the room, and all the funny with it. Not that the movie is particularly disagreeable, mind you. But it\u2019s disappointing, its laughs mild at best, and rather sparse. The movie\u2019s merely content to coast on the cheesy, self-referential premise and the goodwill of its game-for-anything cast.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So what we get is nutritionless semi-entertaining frippery that takes a few easy jabs at the cynicism of Hollywood productions and the exploitation of intellectual property, but doesn\u2019t lean too heavily into satire \u2013 perhaps thankfully, because we\u2019ve seen enough of that lately. But it doesn\u2019t lean into much of anything, save for the nothing\u2019s-gonna-stop-us camaraderie of old friends coming together in pursuit of a cheezy dream.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The entire movie just goes squish in an unmemorable fashion, as we step on some of the big obvious jokes (although we\u2019re technically not stepping on them if we make them 15 minutes before the movie does) and skippity hop to the inevitable climactic moment in which our protags find themselves in a yawnworthy car chase, yelling bad dialogue over an oldie-moldy Motley Crue track. There\u2019s a self-referential bit here in which a character opines that \u201cevery good film needs a bit of a twist,\u201d as this film, Anaconda, drops a twist. Of course, some bad films also have twists. And I\u2019m sorry, but this film is kind of bad. But I bet it\u2019ll do gangbusters on Netflix.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Our Call: CGI\u2019s better than \u201997 at least. Other than that? Meh. SKIP IT.<\/p>\n

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Rudd and Jack Black plays guys remaking Anaconda in this remake of Anaconda, appropriately titled Anaconda (now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[132115,116352,264,23977,93,61,132116,60,21369,132117,52283,270,14905,21370,105613,105614],"class_list":{"0":"post-269279","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-action-comedies","9":"tag-action-movies","10":"tag-animals","11":"tag-comedies","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ione-skye","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-jack-black","17":"tag-monster-movies","18":"tag-movie-reviews","19":"tag-movies","20":"tag-needle-drops","21":"tag-paul-rudd","22":"tag-steve-zahn","23":"tag-thandiwe-newton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269279","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=269279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}