A comedic reimagining of a more straight-faced story isn’t anything new. You can take an above-average B-movie like Little Shop of Horrors and turn it into a big-budget musical spectacle, or you can take a genuinely chilling movie like The Stepford Wives and maybe lean so heavily into the satire that it loses its edge in a remake. The 2025 remake of Anaconda falls somewhere in between. The original 90s cult classic isn’t exactly a genuinely scary movie, so using it as the template for a comedic jungle romp was a good choice. And at times, both Paul Rudd and Jack Black succeed in taking this goofy concept and elevating it with laughs. And at other times? Well…
Director Tom Gormican, who made the Nicholas Cage meta epic The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, takes a similar approach to this reimagining. In the film, Doug (Black), Griff (Rudd), Kenny (Steve Zhan), and Claire (Thandiwe Newton) take to the jungles of the Amazon in the hopes of remaking the 90s big reptile shocker, only to find their production running into serious trouble when a real flesh eating serpent sets its sights on them and begins to pursue them through the jungle. As far as the story goes, that’s pretty much it.
And that I think is the biggest missed opportunity here, because there is a genuinely good story about rekindled passions in this story. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent wasn’t just a cash-in screwball comedy, but a movie that paid genuine homage to its star while also managing to be, at times, genuinely sentimental. I really wanted to feel the same way about this movie when I went into it. The trailer got me genuinely excited, and I would place this on my list of most anticipated films of the year. I had an image in my head of something like Wet Hot American Summer with a giant snake. Instead, the movie can’t seem to decide what it wants to be, and as it stumbled from set piece to set piece, the giant snake occasionally comes in and eats someone. Maybe that’s the joke, and at least on a first impression, it’s a joke that didn’t seem to quite work.
Firstly, this is a comedy about movie-making and rekindling passions, which is something the film didn’t seem to focus on that much. What worked about Unbearable Weight was that it was a story about a jaded actor who re-discovers his passion for acting after seeing how his work had such a big impact on a fan. That movie worked because, on top of its meta humor, the relationship between Cage and Pascal was genuinely emotional. As characters, Griff and Doug have a lot of potential. Doug is the big dreamer who wanted to make movies and share his dreams with the world, but never left his hometown. Griff is his best friend who did leave town and found work, but finds himself stuck as a background player with no great prospects. Both start the movie facing their own kind of crisis, and the adventure they go on seems to be about reigniting the passion from their youth. An early scene of the pair watching an old home movie at a birthday party and reminiscing about it is a perfect example of just how much potential these characters really have. And you can do that while still being funny.
But a lot of this rich playground for gags and emotions feels like it takes a back seat to some subplots that don’t really go much of anywhere. The original Anaconda had a hammy villain. The new movie tries to continue this tradition with a subplot involving a mysterious stranger (Daniela Melchior) joining the group on their adventure. The character is a wild card whose allegiances are in question, and introducing her into the story does create a lot of promise for some tension and gags. In the end, though, the plot doesn’t seem to go anywhere and just comes across as filler. Again, maybe that is part of the joke where Doug and Griff accidentally stumble into another giant snake movie while trying to film their own. But this joke seems to just kind of be there with no real punchline, and ultimately, the plot is casually tossed aside before the movie tries to focus back on Doug and Griff’s story. The result? It feels like padding, an attempt to introduce conflict in an environment that was already ripe with it. Because the main plot? That’s the movie’s strongest point by far.
The idea of these lovable movie dorks stumbling randomly through another story involving drug runners and giant snakes isn’t a bad idea. And it can absolutely work as an irreverent comedy in the spirit of something like, say, Caddyshack. And true, not every comedy has to have the big emotional moment. You know. Where the music suddenly changes to a soft jingle and the acting suddenly gets serious, and one character usually runs off after a fight, and then the characters reconcile at the end. Yeah. That one. This movie does that. And even that feels a bit rushed because this other subplot takes up too much room.
The strongest thing about this movie is its characters, and they are so strong that despite this subplot bogging down the main adventure, the movie still works well enough to be consistently entertaining. Maybe it’s because the characters here had dreams very similar to mine. Hell, how do you think I wound up writing for a pop culture blog? And maybe it’s because the movie did have a nostalgia factor, appealing to the juveniles who discovered and fell in love with the not-quite-classic original Anaconda circa the 1990s. But there is something about this movie that really does seem a good deal more charming than most comedies from the last few years. And this movie does have more heart and more laughs than most of them.
The movie is also just a fun tribute to one of cinema’s most beloved guilty pleasures. The makers of this movie love Anaconda, and so they made a movie about a group of friends that also loved the movie and used that as a pretext for a movie of their own. And along the way, they wind up also fighting a big man-eating snake. What Anaconda feels like is exactly what the characters on screen are making. A cheesy home movie with a giant snake and a few laughs. There isn’t anything wrong with that, and this just might be the best in the franchise. Although the Anaconda series isn’t exactly a high bar. Then again, I’m not exactly free of prejudice when it comes to giant reptile movies. Still, to me, while this movie could have been better, I didn’t regret seeing it. And I’m looking forward to seeing how I feel about it next time.
When Anaconda first came out, I wore that VHS out until we had to get another one. When it comes to Anaconda, in my case, there’s always a next time.