1997's "Anacanda" was arguably the strongest entry in the decade's brief creature-feature resurgence. Director Luis Llosa and cinematographer Bill Butler created a fabulous looking film, the Amazon location almost as important a character as the titular monster. And the cast, my god the cast! Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, even a freaking baby-faced Owen Wilson is there! It really is a fantastic movie, a little time-capsule of that sweet, sweet cinematic section of the 90s.
Which brings us to the reboot, where the original film also exists. Paul Rudd stars as Griff, a z-list actor who tells his four childhood friends that he has the rights of the franchise, and the quadrilogy of people set out with hardly any money to remake it. They hire a snake handler (Selton Mello), who has an odd fetish for his pet snake Heitor, rent a boat and plan to guerrilla-style fulfill their dream of making an actual movie. It's a strange way to reimagine the first picture, especially when you remember one of the earlier sequels starred David Hasselhoff and a very lousy looking reptile on Sci Fi Channel.
Griff's best friend Doug (Jack Black) acts as the "movie-within-a-movie" director, who reluctantly agrees to the cockeyed plan. He's a family man who only joins because he has sort of a midlife crisis with his day job as a wedding videographer. I have no idea if the two are friends in real life, but they only slightly have any chemistry together, though anyone would struggle with the lame script from this film's director Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten. I heard exactly one laugh from the audience during my showing. It was over a dead rat, which isn't exactly the mark of good screenwriting. (I did not laugh myself, but who cares about what I think.)
Thandiwe Newton and Steve Zahn round out the fictional foursome, playing as Claire and Kenny respectively, but only Zahn really strikes the right tone this misbegotten meta-remake, with his crazy eyes and overanxious delivery. Claire and Griff are purportedly prior lovers, and they play romantic leads in the films' film, but they too aren't exactly believable as anything other than attractive actors acting attractive towards one another.
There's more plot than just a movie about making a movie: their boat captain is actually the mysterious Ana (Daniela Melchior), who we see as the film opens on the run from equally mysterious muscle men with guns. Doug quickly rewrites his script to include her (as they say several times, to add "themes"). This eventually leads to an artifical riff in the original cast, but wait, there's more! The sham film crew ends up bumping elbows with another filmcrew, when they learn Sony (who actually acted as distributed of this) is also remaking 1997's Anacanda.
Oh, and then there's the snake itself: as a monster movie, the limbless lizard is never especially convincing. I assume it's because this is partly a comedy (supposedly) that the special effects are pretty pathetic. Are we supposed to laugh? Be thrilled? I doubt the filmmakers even know.
This new version of "Anacanda" never really gels, stumbling awkwardly from would-be joke to would-be snake action. Everyone just runs around frantically, Rudd grinning stupidly at the camera, Black always sounds winded, Newton is just sorta there, and Melchior never looks like she's spent any actual time in the jungle. But we do have Zahn, and boy does he try.
I struggle to figure out what this whole production is really about. The few scenes about the hardships of movie-making are lost admist the synthetic noise, but my biggest issue are the brief moments we see of the legit Sony produced remake. All these awesome sets (not to mention its cast) had me wishing I was watching that movie instead.
