acid reflects

Nobody was asking for a soul-ripping, mind-numbing, transcedental meditation when the idea to rehash (not remake, not reboot) the 1997 cult classic Anaconda into a comedy was pitched to Sony. Maybe. I don’t know, I’m guessing. Because somebody probably saiid, “We don’t have an IP outside Spider-Man.” The pitch was a comedic reincarnation with Jack Black in charge of the laughs. The risks were low for this production. So now we have this. Thankfully, Jack Black’s comedic talent was unharmed during the making of this meta comedy.

In this comedy about making movies, longtime friends Doug (Jack Black) and Griff (Paul Rudd) are both having their midlife crises. Doug is a wedding video maker who isn’t challenged by the tricks of his trade anymore, while Griff is a screen bit player who isn’t booking the gigs he would like to (maybe because he’s a terrible actor.) Over a lunch reunion, Griff sells the idea to reboot their favorite movie Anaconda to Doug and the rest of their former teen filmmaking gang – Claire (Thandiwe Newton) and Kennie (Steve Zahn). At first, Doug resists the suggestion. But a reality check at work pushes Doug to get that production ball rolling with the help of his buddies. This is all amusing to me as a fomer wedding video editor and indie filmmaker myself. I have notes on Doug’s, uhm, methodologies.

After successfully securing some money to finance their Hollywood fantasy (or big home movie, whichever way you can put it) the gang arrives in the Amazon (somehwere in Brazil.) They meet thier quirky snake wrangler Santiago (Selton Mello) who would also serve as their guide. They meet the boat captain Ana (Daniela Melchior) who, unbeknownst to the gang, isn’t really the boat’s captain. Mysterious Ana has a secret, but for the moment, nothing is revealed except that she seems to be running away from suspicious-looking men (the film actually opens with Ana and another mysterious man escaping from the suspicious men.)

For the filmmaker in me, things were indicating that Doug’s tiny skeleton crew is not going to be an efficient production. First, Kennie the camera guy wasn’t even shooting B-roll footage the moment they set foot on the Amazon, considering it’s their first time there. Also, this bit would suggest that Doug isn’t a good editor either. The port, the actual river – Kenny wasn’t shooting these, which would have been good atmospheric cutaways for their not-so-home movie. And they’re recording sound in-camera which is terrible for dialogue. But who knows? The end result might’ve surprised. It was an indie. Anyways, back to THEM.

The gang actually immediately does film scenes between the “stars” Claire and Griff on their first day, complete with behind the scenes footage – and whatever they were making actually sounded like it was campy fun. Recently-divorced Claire and unmarried Griff were conveniently rekindling the closeness they had back when they were teens. the If only the movie I was watching was as campy fun as the movie they were making.

Trouble begins when Hector, Santiago’s pet baby anaconda and their movie’s stunt animal is accidentally killed while filming a scene with Griff. Griff blurts out a question which I thought was strange to ask, considering the circumstances. The delivery was somewhat funny, but I wondered if Rudd wondered about the significance of the line during their actual filming, since it did sound misplaced. Actors can do that in shoots, you know.

That night, Santiago and Griff venture out into the jungle as the crew rested, moored on the side of the great river. Tragically, Santiago will not return to the boat that night. The alerted crew including Ana all enter the jungle in search of Santiago, but instead come across the suspicious men that were hunting for Ana and the giant anaconda that has been following them around for a while. The crew narrowly escapes both the men and the anaconda, using an abandoned van that happened to be there in the jungle.

The next morning, Doug is inspired to imake changes in their movie, including Ana in the cast since she displayed skills in action and fighting off the suspicious men. This is such an indie move, considering that they don’t have a snake in their movie but an actual one that might kill them is out there prowling. Griff is miffed that his starring role is getting sidetracked by an ass-kicking beautiful Brazilian (in real life, Melchior is Portuguese.) While this is going on, a big boat carrying a large film crew reveals the true status of their film license. Doug and Griff argue, shattering their decades-long friendship. Griff leaves on a rubber boat. (I am impressed by this bravado from Griff, considering the expanse of the great river that they have never laid eyes upon before, Anacondas and piranhas be damned. Maybe Piranhas would be the sequel?)

As soon as Griff has left, Ana commandeers the crew into the jungle again and reveals her true intentions and why she his being followed by suspicious men. Griff returns just in time to rescue his friends, but not after the giant anaconda takes out the bad people. The crew scrambles across the Amazon jungle to escape the giant snake, but conveniently find themselves in an abandoned film set (the big production they previously met along the river), seemingly wrecked by the anaconda days before. Doug and the crew make a last stand against the giant snake in the set, using their knowledge of filmmaking to outwit the anaconda.

It’s a wild ride that on paper would have sounded like a fun misadventure that would have been a welcome antidote to the darkness poisoning the real world at this time in history. This Anaconda just doesn’t land well quite often. That said, at no point did I want to quit the film entirely and walk out. I’ll give it that.

Key to this is yes, Black’s gusto attack to make Doug a character you’d watch to the end. Black has played a filmmaker before in Peter Jackson’s King Kong twenty years ago but back then, he was playing a financially desperate filmmaker (okay maybe it is the same character in Anaconda but less ruthless and less talented storyteller.) Maybe a little of the banter between Black and Rudd was entertaining, their characters actually feeling like they have known each other for very long. But sometimes I felt that Rudd was hamming it a few notches lower than Black – maybe to complement Black’s Doug but a few times felt that energy was different. Chemistry is crucial for movie tandems and here, they were good for about 95% of the time. Newton was hamming it up easily, while I wasn’t sure about Zahn’s Kennie. Who could have served the story a bit more with the possiblity of more laughs was Mello’s Santiago. I wanted more Santiago punchlines, so I was enjoying his comedy a bit more than the rest of the cast except Black.

What to me was a missed opportunity by this reimagining of the 1997 movie was for the gang’s adventure in the Amazon to have more suave callbacks to their teenage passion project monster movie The Quatch. For the audience, that would have meant a little more footage of The Quatch to show. Indeed, I hoped that the end credits had shown the entire short film as treat. (SPOILER ALERT) The epilogue that showed that Doug eventually made Griff and Claire’s wedding video felt like a rushed way to bring Doug’s life full circle.

There have been many films about filmmaking – many of them more serious in topic or treatment than this comedy that frequently referenced the real 1997 movie, its cast and its studio but never crossed the threshold of being satirical. I don’t know if that would have elicited more laughter from the audience. Maybe it could also be cultural – that some jokes are funnier to USians than to non-American audience members like myself. Maybe it could have been a different movie had the makers added satirical commentary. That’s not the film here, but it definitely was suggesting things.

For all the big ideas this movie had when it was just being pitched, the end result was a film that was full of set ups that only had missing or small payoffs.

Anaconda is in Philippine theaters now from Columbia Pictures Philippines. (Images and links from Columbia Pictures)