Paul Rudd, Jack Black in Toothless Action-Comedy

“The snake is a metaphor for the monsters that come for all of us if our dreams are left unrealized,” a character explains near the end of Anaconda (2025) about his new movie, The Anaconda, a low-budget take on 1997’s Anaconda.

This is, we are meant to understand, total horseshit. Nor is his project about grief, or revenge, or intergenerational trauma, or any of the other capital-T Themes that has its writer-director, Doug (Jack Black), dreaming of an awards play crowning him as “the white Jordan Peele.” The Anaconda isn’t really about anything, just as Anaconda (2025) isn’t really about anything, and Anaconda (1997) wasn’t really either.

Which is perfectly okay, in theory — one of the reasonable points being made in this Anaconda is that it can be enough for a movie to simply be entertaining, like the original was. But it’s a lesson that would land more convincingly from a film fun enough to be satisfying, rather than one so insubstantial you begin wishing for something, anything, to sink your teeth into.

The premise, conceived by The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent co-writers Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten and directed, like that meta Nic Cage vehicle, by Gormican, is clever on paper. Doug is a once-aspiring filmmaker now eking out a “B, maybe B+ life” as a wedding videographer in Buffalo, New York, when his lifelong bestie, Griff (Paul Rudd), comes to him with an offer he can’t refuse. What if they tried to mount a remake (or reboot, or reimagining, or spiritual sequel — the silliness of Hollywood marketing terms is one of the running gags) of their very favorite thriller from childhood, Anaconda?

Never mind that Doug’s script for The Anaconda does not much seem to resemble the original, or that what we see of struggling actor Griff’s work does not suggest any great undiscovered talent, or that their other friends and co-conspirators, Claire (Thandiwe Newton) and Kenny (Steve Zahn), have even less experience making movies than they do. The point is for the gang to tap back into the joy they felt as teenagers shooting things like The Quatch, an R-rated school project inspired equally by Martin Scorsese and creature features.

So, armed with not much more than a camera, a dream and the dubiously helpful assistance of an eccentric snake handler named Santiago (Selton Mello) and a mysterious boat captain named Ana (Daniela Melchior), they strike out for a three-week shoot on the Brazilian Amazon.

You can guess what enormous problems they run into once there, though unlike the thriller it’s halfheartedly aping, this Anaconda eschews horror almost entirely. While the serpent is bigger this time — one character likens it to something out of Jurassic Park — it’s far less menacing, good for a few jump scares but not much else. Most of its killing is done very quickly and under cover of shadows more forgiving of lackluster CG budgets, and it delivers nothing as awesomely grotesque as, say, the sight of Voight’s partially digested face winking at Jennifer Lopez.

Instead, the film leans into action-comedy, and for a while, coasts by on the pre-sold likability of its cast. Rudd is amusing in a slightly pathetic way as an actor who’s not quite successful enough to be self-important (his biggest role to date is a four-episode guest spot on CBS’ S.W.A.T.) but isn’t above pretensions like gnawing on a toothpick to “unlock” his character. Doug’s arc might call to mind Black’s more interesting work in Be Kind Rewind or Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, but the memory of those roles is enough to make you root for this version of the guy, too. Newton is underused but enjoyably game, and Zahn emerges as a surprise scene-stealer.

It’s easy enough to chuckle along with this foursome as they trade Jon Voight impressions around a diner booth or demonstrate head butts for each other over dinner, and then to want them to survive once the monsters come out. I laughed here and there, gasped at least once and all in all had an okay time. But I also started to wonder, as the minutes ambled on, if a film with a concept this intruging and a cast this charming shouldn’t be more than “okay.”

Anaconda can’t be accused of skimping on excitement when the characters spend half the movie racing through the jungle in cars or on foot or by boat. But the weightless and unimaginative action feels less cinematic than theme park-y, as if the powers that be at Sony had jumped several steps ahead in their efforts to grow this into a global juggernaut franchise.

It’s trying harder on the comedy side, and succeeding somewhat more often — especially when it comes to Zahn’s Kenny, a sweet-natured screw-up who professes to being “Buffalo sober,” by which he means “just beer and wine and some of the lighter liquors.” But shaggy pacing does no favors to jokes that are only kind of amusing to begin with, like a protracted bit about pee-shy Kenny struggling to urinate on Doug in a misguided attempt to save him from spider venom.  

Meanwhile, its ostensibly heartwarming elements are undone by their vagueness. Doug, Griff, Claire and Kenny themselves are drawn in such quick, broad strokes that they barely seem like people, and despite their professed love for Luis Llosa’s Anaconda, never seem to have much to say on it beyond vague remarks about how cool it was. While the new film dutifully serves up the callbacks you’d expect, including a cameo that made my audience clap, you never get a sense of why these buddies connected to this property more than any other.

It’s enough to make me wish I could have seen Doug’s The Anaconda instead. Sure, his “indie-style” project seems to feature a nonsense plot, amateurish acting and extremely questionable action. But at least it would be a labor of love. Gormican’s Anaconda is just a big-budget IP extension trying to pretend it’s something sweeter and scrappier than it is. You don’t need to fall prey to its pretense.