Anaconda (2025)

PG-13 primarily for swearing, including one f-bomb.  I mean, sure, it's technically a horror comedy.  There's a not-nothing amount of gore in the movie.  But it's all kind of silly.  Like, the tone is absolutely going for absurd goofiness.  (I almost wrote "absurdity" and that's not accurate.)  I watched it with my twelve-year-old son who thought it was just perfect.  Sure, it could be a little scary.  But honestly?  It's heavy on the comedy and light on the horror.  

DIRECTOR: Tom Gormican

Why are people mean to movies like this?  Honestly.  Okay, I've probably been mean to movies like this, so I'm not one to talk.  But Anaconda (2025) seems to be absolutely hated.  That I don't understand.  Will I admit that Anaconda is a bit too silly at times and is probably going to be forgotten?  Sure.  Am I going to be disappointed if I see it on a student's Top Five list.  Also, true.  But what people dont really seem to get is that Anaconda aims for a very specific target and I think, for the most part, hits that target.  This is meant to be popcorn silliness, not a great reboot to the Anaconda franchise.

I was never a fan of the original franchise.  If I had to bet, I've probably seen the first one (I've lost all street cred when it comes to the previous sentence) and I haven't seen any of the others.  I don't know.  The original Anaconda was such the product of its era.  This was a time when there was big name talent thrown at popcorn screams and that's about it.  Golly, I've seen so many movies like Anaconda.  And maybe if you were a fan of this genre of film, I could see getting annoyed at a reboot that acts more as a silly commentary of an era that we just don't see in movie theaters anymore.  Yeah, this is a straight up joke about the original Anaconda movies.  But honestly, you could palate swap Anaconda with a lot of other movies and it still works.  It's more of a shot at my generation's movie tastes growing up in the '90s and 2000s.  (I was born in 1983.  This doesn't feel like an attack on '80s movies.)  This is a movie that reminds you what it meant to be a Blockbuster Video kid.  I choose Blockbuster specifically because Blockbuster was infamous for having hundreds of copies of big budget B-movies than any other video store.  Golly, they loved that stuff.  I think I watched the original (if I remember correctly) just from the sheer numbers of copies they had sitting on the shelf.

And, honestly, this era of movies may be precious to some.  I actually applaud those people who probably get nostalgic watching Dante's Peak or Deep Impact.  Heck, even respect for the Lake Placid folks out there.  I enjoy these movies from a completely superficial level and that's fine.  I hope these people enjoy their favorite kinds of movies.  It's just that it never feels like Anaconda (2025) is making fun of the original Anaconda or any of their ilk.  If anything, this feels more like a silly celebration of movies like this.  The guy who made this movie also made The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, one of the best action comedies of the past decade.  What made that movie great was the fact that it was about friendships and passion.  It just so happened that these two were in an action film by accident.  The same can kind of be said for Doug and Griff.  These are stories of friends.  Yeah, while Nick Cage [sic] may be a bit more introspective than these two guys, they are ultimately in the same situation.  These guys want to live a small life and the one time that they bit off more than they could chew, a giant snake tries to eat them.  I know that it is simple, but that's also an excuse to make the movie about anything other than the snake.

One of the running gags of the movie is that these two goofballs are patting themselves on the back for including "themes" and "character", but that's oddly enough what is probably getting attacked by those who don't care for this movie.  I'll tell you right now:  I don't give a crap about the snake.  The snake is silly.  The snake doesn't have rules and nor should it.  We need the snake to make the movie an Anaconda movie.  But the movie is about keeping these goofballs talking about friendship and passion projects.  These are the guys who made Raiders!  If you don't know the Raiders! doc and you don't feel like reading yet another overworded blog, these guys --as kids --remade Raiders of the Lost Ark.  While this is a movie that owes a great debt to the Indiana Jones movies,  it really doesn't matter because the story is about friendship and filmmaking.  It's about a love for cinema and how adulthood puts stress on that friendship.  For our entire lives --as Americans --we've been fed the narrative of the American Dream.  As long as you work hard, you can become anything.  But the American Dream often is ignored by most people because of security.  Would I have taken different risks if I knew that I didn't have to be present for a family?  Maybe.  That's Griff and Doug.  Griff went to Hollywood to flounder for a good long time and Doug decided to settle down and take care of his family .  While animosity grows between the two of them, especially when Doug discovers a natural talent that evolves into confidence, there is conflict on the two.

If I have to stop defending the movie --because it is a little weird that I'm defending it as much as I am --it is a little formulaic.  I can't deny that there is rarely a moment of genius in this movie.  But I am also saying that Anaconda never went for that.  It's sending up a franchise that is more derided than it is celebrated.  The whole shtick is that it is kind of silly that anyone is even talking about this movie so far down the road.  Anaconda as a franchise became the perfect franchise for the Sci-Fi (or SyFy) network at its lowest.  There is something incredibly meta about the jokes being as low-brow as they are.  The movie isn't The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent because this does feel like a bit of a corporate shill project for Sony Pictures, a company that continues to disappoint me.  

But silliness isn't really all that bad.  Yeah, I don't want all the movies to be the reboot to Anaconda.  If anything, I can safely say "We got it."  Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Steve Zahn, and Thandie Newton made a very silly comedy that I could watch with my kid.  It's all of them doing the thing that they do in other movies, only together.  Does it play?  Yeah.  On top of that, it takes the formula and gets a little cheeky with it.  There are some twists that are so silly because the takeaway is "Who cares?"  But that's what made me giggle.  Do I need any more of this?  Absolutely not.  Maybe once in a blue moon, you toss me a little giggle film.  The closest thing that I could compare it to is Jumanji and even that's a little bit off.  Still, go into this with low expectations and optimism and you'll probably have a good time.