{"id":366027,"date":"2025-12-23T18:55:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T18:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/366027\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T18:55:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T18:55:08","slug":"high-concept-cover-version-trades-horror-for-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/366027\/","title":{"rendered":"High-Concept Cover Version Trades Horror for Comedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWith \u201cAnaconda<\/a>,\u201d the Hollywood studio system comes closer than ever to devouring its own tail.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1997, Sony Pictures made \u201cAnaconda,\u201d a notoriously insipid creature feature starring Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube and a ferocious animatronic snake. The low-rent \u201cJaws\u201d knockoff was conceived as a horror movie, but received by many as a comedy \u2014 the kind where viewers wound up laughing at the unintentionally corny dialogue and egregiously bad decisions made by characters in serious need of a bigger boat. So when it came time to reboot the franchise, the studio had a choice: Play it straight or lean in to the humor?<\/p>\n

\n\tEnter Tommy Gormican, the mind behind 2022\u2019s \u201cThe Incredible Weight of Massive Talent,\u201d a mostly clever meta-comedy in which a good-sport Nicolas Cage played \u201chimself,\u201d actively parodying the sort of spoof-ready action movies that have kept him busy in recent years. There, the concept ultimately promised more than Gormican\u2019s execution managed to deliver. Alas, that failing feels even more acute with \u201cAnaconda\u201d \u2014 an extended riff (with no real punchline) on what a soulless, sell-out practice it is for Hollywood to keep circling back to bottom-tier IP, when countless original ideas are still to be made.<\/p>\n

\n\tGormican\u2019s \u201cAnaconda\u201d may be a one-joke exercise (make that two jokes, if you count the repeated sampling of the \u201cMy anaconda don\u2019t want none\u201d line from \u201990s rap classic \u201cBaby Got Back\u201d), but it\u2019s hard not to admire the nerve of whichever studio exec greenlit it. The script, which Gormican penned with Kevin Etten, spends a fair amount of time parsing whether it\u2019s a reboot, a reimagining or a \u201cspiritual sequel\u201d to the 1997 movie, when in fact, it\u2019s a ballsy all-of-the-above treatment of the material.<\/p>\n

\n\tInstead of simply doing a pro-forma reboot, Gormican has crafted an elaborate industry satire in which an inexperienced gang of amateur filmmakers travel all the way to Brazil to relaunch the killer-snake franchise, only to find themselves terrorized by a giant CG snake in the process. The new \u201cAnaconda\u201d crew consists of Griff (Paul Rudd<\/a>), a struggling actor who moved out to Hollywood only to languish doing bit parts on crap TV series, and Doug (Jack Black<\/a>, in feisty \u201cJumanji\u201d mode), who\u2019s stuck back in Buffalo making overcomplicated wedding videos for couples who couldn\u2019t care less about his \u201cideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGriff still has feelings for childhood sweetheart Claire (Thandiwe Newton), who depletes both her PTO and personal savings to participate. On location, sparks supposedly rekindle, just not in any way the audience can detect. Also along for the ride is loose-cannon Kenny (Steve Zahn), an endearing dum-dum with addiction issues, who\u2019s consistent about just one thing: Kenny can be counted on to blow every task they give him, starting with the hiring of exotic snake trainer Santiago (Selton Mello).<\/p>\n

\n\tOn paper, this approach to \u201cAnaconda\u201d suggests a promising four-decades-later reunion of the sort of characters seen in \u201cSuper 8\u201d or \u201cSon of Rambow,\u201d which celebrated the allure that blockbuster movies hold for junior movie geeks with access to basic filmmaking equipment. Gormican and Etten have found such an intuitive postmodern angle that another Jack Black movie immediately springs to mind: Michel Gondry\u2019s \u201cBe Kind Rewind,\u201d in which video store clerks did kooky remakes of childhood favorites with limited means.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s the kind of \u201chigh\u201d concept a bunch of stoners might kick around on a podcast (the way Kevin Smith spitballed the idea for body-horror prank \u201cTusk\u201d). With such a premise, audiences can reasonably expect two things. First, it should be amusing to watch these knuckleheads struggle to make a professional-looking motion picture, especially if they have to contend with an unforeseen anaconda. And second, we want to see the end result, which should be so bad, it\u2019s even funnier than the original \u201cAnaconda.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Gormican appears to have been saddled with a slightly different agenda, one that\u2019s less concerned with laughs: His \u201cAnaconda\u201d still has to function (at least in part) as a horror movie, which means the studio expects a few genuine suspense scenes, and at least a few characters should get eaten. Gormican\u2019s solution is to invent a subplot about illegal gold mining in the Amazon, which provides a crafty, Lara Croft-y character named Ana (Daniela Melchior) to play tour guide, along with plenty of henchmen on her tail to feed that \u2019conda \u2014 all of which feels as cringey and unconvincing as the jungle scenes in 2024 howler \u201cMadame Web.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe jokes practically write themselves, which is why it\u2019s surprising that there aren\u2019t more of them. Apart from a lone wisecrack about Jon Voight\u2019s bizarro accent in the original, the characters hold a reverence for the earlier \u201cAnaconda\u201d that undercuts the movie\u2019s bite. One can only imagine how hilarious it would be to listen to Jack Black deliver a sarcastic, \u201cMystery Science Theater 3000\u201d-style commentary on the 1997 film, but we don\u2019t even see them watch it here. What is their \u201cAnaconda\u201d even about, other than giving these old friends \u2014 who\u2019ve grown apart in the decades since making a DIY sasquatch movie in the woods near their home \u2014 a chance to catch up?<\/p>\n

\n\tMost of the comedy is of the slapstick variety, including set-pieces with a live tarantula, a dead squirrel and a squealing wild hog. Meanwhile, the action is so clumsy as to suggest that studio execs should have engaged a second unit to handle the snake-attack scenes. The PG-13 rating might have squeezed the more shocking moments, including a fumbled jump-scare reminiscent of Samuel L. Jackson\u2019s mid-sentence exit in \u201cDeep Blue Sea.\u201d But Gormican just doesn\u2019t seem very comfortable with horror \u2014 or with killing off his characters, for that matter.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe movie could have really used some of that anarchic, industry-skewering \u201cTropic Thunder\u201d energy. The only risk taken here was asking Sony \u2014 plus any surviving members of the original cast \u2014 to poke fun at themselves, which only goes so far when the film has no fangs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With \u201cAnaconda,\u201d the Hollywood studio system comes closer than ever to devouring its own tail. In 1997, Sony…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[71914,88,12625,206,85073,179966],"class_list":{"0":"post-366027","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-anaconda","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-jack-black","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-paul-rudd","13":"tag-tom-gormican"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}