lord_orsum

Let's be honest, this film is nothing more than unpretentious entertainment. Jack Black and Paul Rudd play lifelong buddies who, having mutual mid-life crises, decide to fulfil a lifelong dream to remake Anaconda (1997).

Off they go to the Amazon with their two friends and a tiny budget. Shenanigans ensue.

Yes, it made me laugh. Yes, it made me cringe. Yes, it was entirely predictable. Yes, it was worth seeing from some easy-going fun.

There is a lot of both good and bad in this film.

On the good side, Russell Crowe puts in an excellent performance (especially given some of his recent lacklustre performances). His Goring is magnetic, charismatic, and sinister.

On the downside, the script is heavy-handed with the messaging, especially the "it must not happen again part", despite the fact that I wholeheartedly agree with this warning.

If the viewer is to take anything away from this movie, it is that these horrors were perpetrated by people, simply human beings. To view them as something else, to label them as "monsters" shields us from the fact that such atrocities are only a short step away for most people.

And that is the true horror on display here.

This film is 3hrs 17 min long, which is long, but it does not feel like it. If anything is a metric for a good film, this must be it.

If you liked the first two Avatar movies, then you will like this one. The characters develop and the action is epic (pretty much guaranteed with James Cameron). The main criticism is that it is somewhat "more of the same". Not a lot of new ideas are presented that have not already been shown in the first two films.

Having said that, having a movie series with such a clear and consistent vision, and a coherent story that is clearly planned out across the entire series, is refreshing (we are looking at you Star Wars).

While the Avatar movies may not reshape storytelling, they do everything that an adventure movie should do; entertain the audience.