Anaconda (2025)

Looking for a dumb, silly 90-minute comedy, a quick hit of laughs? Let the meta-goofball ANACONDA put its squeeze on you.

Paul Rudd and Jack Black are two of my favorite big screen comedy actors and they put on a superb show of goofball antics as two lifelong friends who've always wanted to make a movie together.

Black plays Doug McCallister, a frustrated film maker stuck in an everyday job as a wedding photographer. His storyboarding of a nuptials video as a slasher flick are pretty funny, if underappreciated by the couple.

When childhood best friend and bit part actor Ron Griffin Jr (Rudd) returns home for Doug's birthday, he carries hometown hero status, even though his biggest role to date was a four episode arc on "SWAT".

Two other best friends from childhood complete their fearsome foursome.

Thandiwe Newton shows off her comic skills as Claire, recently divorced and ready for adventure, and Steve Zahn (You've Got Mail, That Thing You Do) is hilarious as Kenny, their cinematographer with a bit of an addiction issue. Reliable he isn't, generating big laughs.

When Ron announces that he's got the rights to remake "Anaconda" to the group, they soon drop everything to shoot a cheap ass sequel in the jungles of Amazon.

Watching these suburban jokers land in a third world country, hire a giant snake handler and head out on the most unpredictable boat down the river since Martin Sheen's Captain Willard headed out to find Brando's Kurtz is a hell of a set up.

The comedy is a lot more meta and funnier than I expected.

Their adventure gets a lot bigger when they run into a Lara Croft type bad ass named Ana (Daniela Melchior) who's guns deep in an illegal gold mining operation.

Snake handler Santiago (Selton Mello) is a laugh out loud blend of yogi, outdoor adventurer and pet lover. Of course his pets are rather large and deadly.

I had no idea where this was headed and loved where it went for laughs, flipping itself on its head and bending over backwards.

Jack Black is one funny dude. His line delivery, facial expressions and physical comedy timing comes to life in the jungle. He nails the creative spirit and overconfidence of a movie maker who knows his big break is right around the corner.

Pairing Black with Paul Rudd is inspired. Rudd fills Ron Griffin with so much bravado, self importance and enough bad acting instincts for a crowd of extras. I imagine a lot of their dialogue was improvised, as it's so fast, furious and off the wall that it's hard to imagine it was ever on a page.

Steve Zahn steals the entire movie for me, delivering huge laugh after laugh. His Kenny is so innocent, so stupid and so high for most of the movie that he becomes its comic core. It's a master class in understated and quiet asides. Zahn's fantastic.

There are some very funny cameos, nailed by the actors that I won't reveal here.

The special effects are better than expected, and the photography by Nigel Bluck (True Detective) is first rate, capturing all the right parts of Queensland, Australia to surely make you think that you're deep in the Amazon.

I saw this as the second half of a double feature day, after the intense and breathless "Marty Supreme", the light dessert after that feast, if you will. It turns out that ANACONDA was the perfect comic fluff and hilarious bite, slithering and exploding its way to a surprising B.