Anaconda - Alla ricerca dell'orchidea maledetta

It is a nice "cozy sofa at home, tasty dinner, legs on the table" type of movie that you just can't resist to enjoy. The actors are fine to be real, the visuals are not so bad, especially the anacondas, the effects are pretty okay, so there is nothing to moan about, apart from the slightly shallow story. Nice movie to watch when tired and you need something to relax with.

A scientific expedition sets out for the island of Borneo. They are in search of a flower named the Blood Orchid. Reports say that this flower can lead to a longer life. But what they find inhabiting the rain forest of Borneo are a group of anacondas. But they aren't ordinary... the Blood Orchid made the anacondas longer, faster, and smarter. Now the scientists must find a way out of the rain forest by outsmarting, outrunning and outliving the anacondas.

This movie got slammed by pretentious movie-critic-wannabes who don't understand the concept of a popcorn flick. This is a popcorn flick, a movie that you watch and eat lots of popcorn and enjoy yourself, cause Shakespeare it is not.

I enjoyed the movie, and I'm planning on buying the DVD.

The story combines elements of first film and provides exciting and stirring entertainment .It concerns about a scientific chief(Dennis Ardnt)assigns to his group(Morris Chesnut,Mattew Mardsen,Strickland,Salli Richardson,Eugene Byrd among others)encounter a strange flower called ¨Blood orchid¨that could grant lasting life.They are going out from New York City until Borneo jungle where is allegedly the rare flower.They hire an adventurer(Johnny Messner) leading the expedition by means a boat through the river and a dangerous forest.Meanwhile they confront each other and attacked by a pack of large Anacondas which are deadlier and bigger but the orchid gives longer existence. The giant snakes savagely are stalking its prey and the group run afoul and fight against one nature's most fearsome predators.

The movie delivers the goods with hair-raising chills,full of scares when the Anacondas appear with outstanding special effects.The giant snakes are majority made by computer generator but also by Animatronics and seem totally alive.Actors give vigorously physical performances dodging the Anacondas,running,bound and leaps or dangling over a well which contains a snakes nest.The Anacondas ,themselves,of course ,are the authentic stars and they're marvellous terrifyingly astounding and almost totally convincing.Spectacular music adjusted to the action by Nerida Tyson and colorful cinematography by Stephen Windon.The motion picture is regularly directed by Dwight H. Little,an expert action genre such TV movies(24,Prison break,Bones)as cinema(Rapid fire,Masked for death,Free Willy 2,Murder at 1600).The film will like to former(Anaconda with Jennifer Lopez) film fans and adventures cinema enthusiastic.No for small kids by realistic,gory and violent attack scenes.

Rating: * 1/2 out of ****

As if further proof that I am in serious need of better taste, I was actually looking forward to seeing this movie, not so much because I was expecting anything great but because I'm a sucker for big-studio, jungle-set adventures. The fact that it's got giant snakes can only help, and heck, this movie's own predecessor wasn't half-bad. All things considered, Anacondas was about on par with what I expected: cheese, but reasonably watchable cheese.

In the hopes of becoming millionaires, a group of young, "attractive" researchers hire a boat, whose captain is expectedly hard-boiled and hunky, to take them into the jungles of Borneo in search of the rare Blood Orchid, a flower with the ability to prolong life but the catch is that it blooms for only a six month period every seven years, and they're approaching the last few weeks of that time span. The expedition's boat sinks in a mishap involving a waterfall, leaving the group stranded and easy prey for the freakishly large anacondas in the vicinity.

The title Anacondas suggests probably a bit more than even the movie can deliver, with the first genuine snake attack (barring the opening credits) not even occurring until the forty-minute mark, and even then, it's not for another half-hour until someone from the same group is munched on by one of those slithery reptiles. There's a surprisingly bare minimum utilization of the titular creatures, though I suspect that has a lot to do with budgetary limitations.

If there's anything I expected to be a vast improvement upon the original, it'd be the visual rendering of the anacondas, but they're actually a few steps backward from the already spotty work in the original. For cost-effective purposes, virtually all the effects are CGI, and they're only a tiny bit better than what one would expect from a Sci-Fi Pictures Original. Making the snakes larger also works against the effects, making them goofier and harder to take seriously as a genuine threat.

Worse, the snakes themselves seem a lot wimpier despite those "advancements." The anacondas have been essentially mutated by the Blood Orchid, so they're understandably larger (at least twice so) than the snakes in the original and probably a lot longer as well. Unfortunately, they're also inexplicably much easier to kill this time around. One whack from a machete (used by someone who's never wielded one before in her life) is enough to hack off one of these monstrosities' heads clean off. One of the snakes even manages to explode after being set alight by gasoline and a flare. And correct me if I'm wrong, but when did anacondas actually have teeth?

The movie's various roles and characters are as stereotypical and obvious as one can expect from the genre. There's the hunky male American with his haunting past and he's got a hunky Asian sidekick/first mate. There's the "serious" black guy and the comic relief black guy, the latter of whom is probably the most obnoxious character I've seen in film all year. There's also the serious chick with "depth" and the whiny chick. In performing these roles, the cast is almost all terrible (especially Johnny Messner as the lead), the only modicum of acting talent coming from Morris Chestnut and the promising Kadee Strickland.

While I've done nothing but harp on the movie, the biggest praise I can shower it with is that it's rarely boring. From the lush jungle scenery to the splendid visuals of the snakes right under the surface of the water, Anacondas is at least a movie that's always nice to look at. Even if it's never genuinely exciting or suspenseful, there are a few cheap thrills and a fast pace that doesn't let up. I suspect very undemanding and forgiving genre fans might even like it and it's to them I would even consider recommending this movie. Everyone else should first set their expectations straight.

In New York, the ambitious Dr. Jack Byron (Matthew Marsden) and his associate Gordon Mitchell (Morris Chestnut) present the research of his assistant Sam Rogers (KaDee Strickland) to the CEO and board of directors of a corporation to sponsor a scientific expedition to Borneo. The objective is to find a flower, Blood Orchid, that flourishes for a couple of weeks every seven years and could be a fountain of youth, prolonging the expectation of life of human beings. They are succeeded and once in Borneo, they realize that it is the raining season and there is no boat available to navigate on the river. They pay US$ 50,000.00 to convince Captain Bill Johnson (Johnny Messner) and his partner Tran (Karl Yune) to sail to the location. After an accident in a waterfall, the survivors realize that a pack of anacondas have gathered for mating and their nest is nearby the plantation of Blood Orchid, which made them bigger and bigger.

I saw "Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid" with a very low expectation based on the IMDb User Rating, but I liked this entertaining adventure a lot. The story is full of action and humor, and I laughed a lot when Cole calls Sam of "Lorena Babbitt" when she cuts the head of one anaconda. There are the usual clichés of this type of predictable B-movie, but I had a good surprise in the end. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Anaconda 2: A Caçada Pela Orquídea Sangrenta" ("Anaconda 2: The Hunt for the Bloody Orchid")