A Review by Phil Calabro
1997, Columbia Pictures, Dir. Luis Llosa, Starring Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Hyde, Owen Wilson, A Really Ugly and Cheap Animatronic Snake
What's long, floats, and kills people? The movie Anaconda. It has been a good six years since I have seen this film, and I'm surprised anyone could have actually stayed in the theater the entire time watching his piece of crap. It is one of the utterly terrible films I have seen in a long time, and after this, I need to see a good disaster flick. Day After Tomorrow coming up soon, and it better come quickly.
We find ourselves with a motley crue of documentarians, and their quest on searching the depths of the Amazon for wildlife, sex, and other crap like that. But then, they stumble across a very strange man that looks a lot like Jon Voight...oh wait a tic, it is, but it's Jon Voight with the worst South American accent I have ever heard, main. And then he decides to hold the boat ransom to find the anaconda, a big man-eating snake. Cue Jaws theme ripoff.
The acting here has got to be some of the worst I've seen from supposed A-listers. We've got Jennifer Lopez from Gigli fame, Ice Cube from Torque fame, Owen Wilson from The Big Bounce fame, Jon Voight from everything he's done except Midnight Cowboy. And you know that old phrase about monkeys typing stuff at keyboards? There's a rumor flying around that the monkeys were paid 3 mil an week by Columbia for this film, and they're expecting even more for the sequel coming out this summer.
Tension? What tension? You see one animatronic amphibious creature, you see them all. This mother should be put to better work, such as devouring all the negatives and reels of this movie, because what good are animatronic animals now? I wasn't scared of the freaking snake once during the movie, and when you don't have an ounce of fright in your blood watching these movies, you know the movie is not working to its full potential.
Towards the end, I felt like I was watching the remake of Island of Dr. Moreau, with Voight taking Brando's seat (or two seats...whatever) with all the crazy mad scientist who wants the freaking snake to do his bidding. The movie didn't end, I think I had to watch the actors blow it up twice, set it on fire, and axe its head in about five times till the damn snake actually died.
Anaconda is a pathetic attempt at a horror flick, one of the many that employ terrible acting, writing, and directing just to make a few bucks watching some moviegoing saps scream a bit. It didn't scare me, the sequel shouldn't be made, and let us never speak of this again.
0.5/4 stars
