Anaconda (1997) is a weird one that’s managed to gather a little cult following purely, I think, because it has a giant animal and they always seem to go down well and finds it’s audience. That being said the highest any of my friends on Letterboxd have given it, is 3 stars, I gave it 2. I didn’t know until writing this paragraph it had actually gone onto have 3 sequels (thanks Sony, I guess I now have another franchise I feel obligated to finish even though the scores for the films only get worse). Thankfully, this film isn’t in the same universe as those films (sort of).
Anaconda (2025) follows a group of friends who are having a mid life slump before they decide to travel to the Amazon rainforest in order to reboot Anaconda, when things start to not go quite to plan for them.
I went into this film with extremely low expectations, as I often do with Sony films. I’m not a huge Jack Black fan, I get there’s a market for him and do think he’s talented, but his sense of humour doesn’t always work for me, and when the trailer was fairly generic, especially when the film was going for a 12A/PG-13 rating, I felt like it was going to lack the horror element which can really elevate a film like this. However, with the names involved it’s obvious it’s going for a straight up comedy rather than any sort of horror comedy.
And for a comedy does it do a good job? Is it funny? It’s fine, it had a couple of laughs in the film, genuinely funny moments that had me laughing out loud, which barely has any relevance to the plot of the film. A lot of it falls flat, and even in an audience that had some kids in, I didn’t hear them laughing either. The actual plot of the film is very generic, and doesn’t do much with the other threats going on with the film, and even the giant snake itself never fully feels like as much of a threat. The film also tries to add a couple of side characters outside the group of friends, who are almost there just as plot devices, and unfortunately don’t offer much.
It really had a difficult job, in that the film is quite clearly aimed at fans of the original who might want to have fun with a comedy, featuring Jack Black and Paul Rudd who would draw in an audience of younger people, or at the very least, people who haven’t seen or care about the 1997 film.
Overall, Anaconda falls into some fairly generic troupes of this genre, not delivering anything new, but does so with a bit of charm thanks to the lead actors, who help deliver the couple of laughs the film is actually able to get out. Not a film I’ll likely ever watch again, aside from the couple of laughs which I’ll probably see on TikTok or Reels. The film has struggled at the box office, but I can see finding it’s audience once it hits a streaming service.
What did you think of Anaconda?
Flooders Films 
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