Gross-out appeal revs up Jack Black and Paul Rudd’s Anaconda reboot

Anaconda ★★★
(M), 99 minutes

There’s a ready-made audience for this comic reboot of the 1997 creature feature Anaconda.

The original has become a cult classic treasured among movies that are so bad they’re good, which means fans are watching the new one with an affectionate appreciation of its parodic nods to the original. If you’re among the unconverted, however, you may be less susceptible.

Jack Black in Anaconda, which riffs on the cult-favourite original.

The adventure begins when Griff Griffin (Paul Rudd), an out-of-work actor, tells a few of his old friends that he’s managed to acquire the rights to Anaconda, a picture they’ve all loved since adolescence. Eager to produce a remake, he suggests he and his former girlfriend, Claire (Thandiwe Newton) play the leads, their camera-mad friend Doug (Jack Black) directs and Kenny (Steve Zahn), the fourth member of the group, fills the role of cinematographer.

The story will mirror their own circumstances. Griff and Claire’s characters will also be making an Anaconda reboot – travelling down the Amazon in a boat, shooting scenes as they go. But they must first find an anaconda tame enough to become their co-star while resisting the urge to view cast and crew as its next meal.

Directed by Tom Gormican – known for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, a similarly chaotic Nicolas Cage comedy adventure – the film has one crucial element going for it. Both Rudd and Black are experts when it comes to the comedy of hysteria. They know exactly how to make you laugh while tripping over one another in a state of high anxiety, and the script gives them plenty of opportunities to do just that – especially after they hire their snake handler, Santiago (Brazilian star Selton Mello), and his supposedly biddable anaconda, Heitor. But the action does take some time to get up to speed.

Claire (Thandiwe Newton), Kenny (Steve Zahn), and Griff (Paul Rudd) need to find an anaconda to star in their remake.

The film was not shot in the Brazilian rainforest, but in Australia’s Gold Coast hinterland and other subtropical stretches of southern Queensland. The Tweed River stands in for the Amazon, and if you imagine that bit of information is going to strip away the film’s exotic attractions, don’t worry. The forest looks believably dense and dangerous, and the cast gets appropriately hot and sweaty, which is all that’s needed.

As in the original, the story’s villains are not exclusively reptilian. There’s a sub-plot centring on a gang of gold smugglers together with a mystery involving the boat’s glamorous but secretive skipper, Ana (Portuguese actress Daniela Melchior), but none of the surrounding complications boil up to anything approaching suspense. It’s the story’s gross-out appeal which revs things up to the pitch needed to make the whole thing work.

The ick factor starts kicking in after Santiago’s anaconda is chewed up by a much bigger and tougher rival. From then on, nobody is safe. I’ll spare you the details, but Gormican does take full advantage of the new anaconda’s propensity for swallowing its victims whole. It also regurgitates a select few, supplying the movie with what I will shamelessly call its biggest belly laugh.

Jack Black and Paul Rudd set out to “remake” a movie in Anaconda.

Between panic attacks, there’s little in the way of character development, a flaw which is only to be expected, but the fact that everybody behaves according to type does create an air of predictability.

Some smarter dialogue would have helped, together with a lot more exaggeration in sending up the absurdities which account for the enduring popularity of the first film. Instead, Gormican is relying much too much on the nostalgia vote. At the risk of spoiling the party, I confess to finding the whole thing underdone.

Anaconda is in cinemas on Boxing Day.

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