Anaconda Review by Bobby LePire. Edited by Courtney McAllister.

 

Welcome to ‘Creature Feature Month’ here at Terribly Fun Films! Each week of October, you’ll be treated to a new review of one of the four (yeah, four of ‘em!) ‘Anaconda’ movies in the surprisingly long lived series. Kaiju Stomp and Seeking Asylum will be getting in on the action as well, with giant snake movies of their own. All of this culminating with a Live Rifftrax viewing of the subject of today’s review. Without further ado, let’s all laugh at the first film in the series: “Anaconda”.

 

One can immediately tell how cheesy bad/ stupid fun this movie is before the film even begins. The menu screen for the film is one of the worst I have ever seen, for any movie of any budget. With a bad looking jungle border framing the screen- in which random clips of the movie play- it’s laughably obvious how much of a rush job that was. But the worst thing about the menu is the indicator. It’s the eyes and tail of the snake. I get what the DVD designers were going for, but it’s so goofy looking. Luckily, the film is in much the same state as the menu- silly, laughable, but earnestly trying its damnedest.

 

The movie opens with a pointless text crawl explaining how big and deadly the titular snakes can be. It is useless because our protagonists are making a documentary about an Amazonian tribe, and discussing what dangers the Shirishama would face living in that region isn’t unreasonable at all. The crew are taking a hired ferry down river to get shots of the tribe’s statues and monuments of their gods/ goddesses. During a big storm a poacher’s boat gets demolished and he’s rescued by the filmmakers. Creepiness ensues, as does them getting chased by a huge, angry snake.

 

The cast is made up of some big names, most of whom play the thing completely straight. The jury is still out as to whether they were playing it straight to allow the goofiness to be more believable, or if they just had no idea what kind of film they were making:

• Jennifer Lopez is the director of the documentary, Terri Flores.

• Jon Voight is the poacher, Paul Serone.

• Ice Cube is cameraman Danny Rich.

• Eric Stoltz is the professor hoping to find the tribe’s main village, Dr. Steven Cale.

• Owen Wilson is sound guy Owen Wilson (Yes, his character has name, but it’s just Owen Wilson in the jungle).

• Kari Wuhrer is PA (I think) Denise.

• Jonathan Hyde portrays stuck up host of the documentary, Warren Westridge.

 

Lopez is as reliable as ever, which is to say fairly. She acquits herself handily in the action scenes, and her chemistry with her co-stars, especially love interest Stoltz is solid. However, during some of the quieter moments, she plays things a bit too melodramatically, especially when Voight enters the picture. Eric Stoltz gets to loosen up a bit from his typical persona (or at least his more modern typecasting of sleazebag), and his charm makes his character instantly relatable. Unfortunately his character is almost killed by some wildlife and absent during the bulk of the movie.

 

Voight is hilariously great, or awful depending on your view, with a consistently changing accent of indeterminate origin and a crazed, bug eyed look. Every scene with him is a howler, and the film is infinitely better for it. Ice Cube attacks the silliness with verve, but in a more grounded way than Voight, which allows for some high stakes. Jonathan Hyde wrings a lot of laughs out of a one note character, and despite our introduction to him being that he’s yelling at some porters about his expensive wine, he’s never hateable. The rest of the cast aren’t memorable, but no one does a bad job.

 

After the opening text crawl, the opening title sequence begins. It has some of the jerkiest helicopter shots I have ever witnessed, including Uwe Boll’s reprehensible “Tunnel Rats”. Either the pilot was drunk out of his gourd or the worst (sober) pilot of all time. After some mood scenery, the camera morphs into a first person POV of a snake. While that might sound cool and stylish, in practice it’s dumb and hilarious. The camera tilts this way and that, and rises up and back- like a snake about to strike- and it’s all just dumb. It fails to establish the personality of the snake, the ferocity of the creature, or much of anything beyond solid bouts of laughter.

 

The rest of the cinematography is competent, but no shots stand out. Director Luis Llosa keeps everything oddly tight, so the film never has a truly epic scale. We’re dealing with epic sized snakes, so why not have a scope that could match in size? Don’t take this to mean that there aren’t any wide shots (this isn’t puke-o-rama “Les Miserables”), but the film never fully seems to exist in its own world. The adventure never soars, because the movie fails to wholly engross. The editing is quite excellent, building tension and keeping the lean 88 minute runtime moving at a swift pace. This movie may be lots of things, dull certainly isn’t one of them.

 

While the pacing allows for enjoyment (as do the neat kills, discussed below), certain scenes make no sense. The night after rescuing Voight’s poacher, Wilson and Wuhrer sneak off to the woods for some alone time. This is silly because they have their own quarters on the boat, but pervs and voyeurs are pervs and voyeurs no matter where they are in the world. A wild boar charges them, and Voight saves their lives by shooting the boar. Once Voight’s master plan is revealed, him saving these two makes 100% no sense. He could have just let the boar gore them, since it was the dead of night, and he was sleeping along with everyone else. It was actually easier for him to let the boar do its thing, than intervene, as it causes him issues down the line. Voight saving Wilson and Wuhrer is highly illogical.

 

After some close calls involving the anaconda, they decide to trap it using a big fish hook. We’ve already seen the anaconda destroy much bigger, and deadlier, buildings/ weapons, so exactly what it was about this plan that convinces them it’ll work baffles me (SPOILER: It does not work). Even setting it on fire doesn’t stop the predator from killing its prey! At this point, I am just daring the movie to make less sense!

 

And it graciously accepts my challenge in the form of the relationship between the poacher and the captain of the boat, Mateo. By their constant glances, stares, and looks to each other you’d swear that they were in cahoots. But, they barely say one word to each other, and if they did plan something, it’s the most god awful plan any human being with half a brain cell would conceive- ‘Get your boat stuck out in the rain, so I can pick you up with some random assholes, so we can force them to go the river route you’d have already gotten to, well ahead of schedule if we didn’t wreck your boat, and then we’ll rob them for what little they’d have aboard the boat (it isn’t a yacht or cruise ship), after driving them crazy with creepiness.’ Granted, this is some conjecture on my part, it could very well be that they want to have a tryst but are too scared and confused by their feelings to act upon them.

 

The snake effects utilize a nice amount of practical, animatronics, and CGI. Individually, each of those separate effects look good enough (perhaps better upon initially release, given the movie’s age and swift advancement of effects), but when the movie switches from one to the other, it’s painfully obvious. The textures and coloring don’t line up quite right, which is jarring and it sucks you out of the film. The CGI can be used to neat effect though. One kill involves a jump from a waterfall, and the snake uncoils and snatches its prey out of midair. The CGI looks rubbery and moves stiltedly- as it does throughout- but it’s a cool kill and I don’t know how they’d accomplish that same shot without the aid of computers.

 

The kills throughout the film are exciting, which is the reason this isn’t a complete and utter drag, storywise. The big fish hook thing is beyond idiotic, but it does provide for a nice action moment. There’s a sequence aboard an abandoned boat that’s unnerving as it’s played out like a haunted house type sequence. The climax though, which involves waterfalls, gasoline, a pickaxe, and oh, so, so much fire, is enormously entertaining. Since giving everything away would suck the joy out of the experience of watching the movie, just trust me when I say that the final fight will paint a big, dumb, goofy smile on your face. They are also surprisingly gooey and gory, considering the PG-13 rating. After the anaconda eats a member of the crew, we get an underwater shot of it swimming by, in which you can see the face imprint of the person behind the snake’s scales. The snake regurgitates one of its victims, and that person winks at one of the (current) survivors. It’s a tad shocking to see, and gives the movie an intensity it was lacking beforehand; that this happens in the last ten minutes keeps it from having a real impact.

 

The ending itself- the final two or so minutes- are a pile of crap. It doesn’t resolve a lot- most of the crew is dead, the boat’s gasoline supply is in serious jeopardy of running out, and one character is mortally wounded. I wouldn’t care much, but the way it’s shot, edited, and the music all imply that this is somehow a happy ending. Yes, they escaped the snake (or at least one of them), but their map is gone, and they do not know how much longer it’ll be until they reach a village to land at. How is this a good thing?

 

This film was a surprise success when first released, and I get why. While far from perfect, the gore factor, cool kills, and Jon Voight’s remarkably bad/ brilliantly awesome accent add up to quite the enjoyable creature feature.