Anaconda, le prédateur

I read a lot of the review on this 23 year old flick. It's not as bad as people are saying. It is a well made finely acted unbelievable adventure flick. Anyone that expected this to be an Oscar award winning movie are delusional. I mean really, it's Jay Lo, Ice Cube , Voight, and Owen. It's mindless entertainment and nothing else. Enjoy.

Anaconda is often looked at as cinematic trash. And it is but it's also wonderfully entertaining. Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz, Kari Wuhrer, Owen Wilson and Jon Voight star. Jennifer Lopez is really fierce as the lead and Jon Voight is so bonkers and over the top it's just comically absurd and wonderful. The effects leave something to be desired. The digital doesn't hold up but the practical is still pretty cool. The movie is creepy and funny and it's opening kill features a somewhat young I think Danny Trejo. Sometimes you just need to trash it up.

Before there was "Snakes on a Plane," there was "Anaconda," a Hollywood B-movie from the late 90's that is as notorious for its mixed bag of actors as it is for the gruesome snakes that populate its plot. In the film, a group of documentary film-makers traveling through the Amazon jungle picks up a mysterious man who inadvertently becomes their tour-guide on an unexpected detour. It seems the man is totally crazy and intends to capture one of the Amazon's most notorious and deadliest inhabitants: The Anaconda.

Despite some bad looking CGI-snakes (not bad in a good way) and a horribly mis-matched cast (J-Lo and Eric Stolz? Really?) "Anaconda" is simply a good, dumb time. Without a doubt, it's an utterly ridiculous film that can be insulting to your intelligence, but thankfully it knows not to overstay its welcome and the 90 minutes it takes up makes for a harmless and amusing ride. Ice Cube plays Ice Cube as he always does, while J-Lo turns in one of her more likable roles. You'll also catch Owen Wilson in one of his earliest roles, and John Voight is a pleasure to watch as he eats up the scenery. But face it, this movie is about snakes, and the titular character is the true star here. Surely, the actors on hand have done much worse, and as far as horror/b-movies about snakes, you could pick up much worse yourself. If you enjoy watching giant snakes (who inexplicably scream) stalk rappers, pop-stars and Angelina Jolie's dad, this is the flick for you. Those seeking genuine thrills, however, may find the film coming up a bit short.

Let me tell you about a little film called Anaconda.

I watched this film a dozen times as a kid, I loved monster flicks. Anaconda was bad, it was utterly bad, yet I've seen it more times than I want to admit. Now we visit it again, years later, so we can laugh at how ridiculous this film is.

We open with Danny Trejo, for some reason they dubbed his lines. He doesn't speak English, but the voice the use is so much higher than what we all know to be the gravel voice of Trejo. Just something that I found funny.

The monster effects are laughably bad at times and worse at others. When the snake is animatronic, the obviousness of it all makes it seems like a bad ride at universal. Then we have the CGI effects, which make the snake seem like it doesn't even belong on the screen. The first attack on a human, the entire thing looks like one giant blur. The first time we see the snake in general isn't with some Jaws like reveal, it's simply the thing slithering around in the jungle before it attacks a puma. No big reveal, no slow reveal...just the damn snake out in the open.

In Ebert's review of the film, which is enthusiastically gave a thumbs up, he claims Jon Voight delivers a brave and slimy performance. That I can agree with, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a great performance. It's without a doubt, memorable, but in the campy way. He glares at almost everyone on the screen, his skin is slimy like a snake and immediately untrustworthy. No one else seems to think they are in a bad movie here. Voight seems to know this from the get go. Watch this film and then watch The Room and tell me the performances from them are not almost identical. Is he doing DeNiro? Is he doing Brando? Who the hell knows. It's one wacky performance, that much is a guarantee.

This was one of the early Jennifer Lopez films that probably helped launch her career. Why? I don't know, she doesn't offer anything interesting here. Ice Cube and Owen Wilson play against their usual type, I don't think we've seen either of them in a monster flick since this one,

Suffice to say, Anaconda is a bad film that boarders on being highly enjoyable. Sit back, laugh and enjoy the absurdity of Anaconda. If you take this film seriously...at all, even for one second, then you will utterly hate it.

This is not as bad as some people say it is. Generally, it's pretty formulaic, but there are a few alterations on the monster movie format.

A crew making a documentary set sail down a tropical river, on their way losing their fuel and, you guessed it, bumping into a big snake. There are all the usual characters here: beautiful girl, villain, posh English bloke (there's always one!), working-class hero, etc. They gradually get picked off one-by-one - although guessing the next "victim" is so easy, it takes the fun out of it all.

There are a few oddities in the consistency of the plot. Most of the killing happen in the second half of the film with the first half devoted to boring sub-plots. Curiously, the customary "introduction shock" is not a snake death, but a suicide. We never really find out why this has happened - after all, there is still a lot of Jennifer Lopez to be shown - and this, I think, is one of the main problems with the film. Story lines are attempted but never completed and so the audience will never gain true satisfaction from the film.

Another interesting factor is Terri's boyfriend and his contribution to the story line. During a dive, he gets bitten and the crew manage to recover him. They save his life but he is still unconscious and remains so throughout most of the movie.

However, the weakest character of all is the snake. Sure, it's pretty ugly, but it will never be truly terrifying as the director doesn't play on our sense of fear. We may be surprised when the snake attacks but never truly shocked.

As I said before, this isn't too bad a movie (I've seen worse) - there are some moments of tension, the actors do their jobs and the special effects are far from laughable. You might want to watch this if it's shown of TV, but I wouldn't pay money to see it.