A few years back, Tom Gormican co-wrote and directed The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, a brilliant meta comedy about the career of Nicolas Cage. Now the director is back with an even more preposterous premise. Anaconda is the story of a group of friends in 2025 filming a reboot of the 1997 film of the same name. In doing so, Gormican and his crew of game actors have created a perfect “so bad its good movie” that will have you laughing your butt off.
As soon as the movie starts, you know what you’re getting into. The trailers capture some of the madcap energy, but what they don’t show is how absurdly dramatic the whole thing is treated.
Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Thandie Newton, and Steve Zahn clearly had a great time making this film. Their performances are extremely lightweight, and the jokes hit and miss at a rapid pace, with perfect measure. The entire film is a campy and hammy excuse for these great actors to make us laugh- and they surely do.
The goofiest of plots
Jack Black plays Doug, a man who’s dream is to direct feature films. Paul Rudd plays his best friend Griff, an actor who’s dream is to actually have a leading role. Thandie Newton plays Griff’s ex-sweetheart, and Steve Zahn plays oddball Kenny, the friend who’s just happy to be included.
The team of lifelong friends travel to Brazil in order to film a reboot of one of their all-time favorite films Anaconda, a notoriously campy 90s thriller. There is no apparent character depth or development- because this is a movie about people getting eaten by a giant snake.
Yet, despite the fact that these characters are seemingly two dimensional, these charismatic actors still make you really care about them. While the characters may not always be implicitly likable, the performers work to make you not want to see them die. Emotionally speaking, it works much better than anticipated.
A spoof for the sake of spoof’s
The story itself starts out as foolish, gets more stupid by the minute, and is constantly testing the limits of storytelling logic. In short- it’s one of the funniest movies I’ve seen last year.
The film has a few levels within itself. Naming itself ‘Anaconda‘ of course, though not being a direct spoof of the original. Instead, Gormican and co-writer Kevin Etten opted for a spoof of Hollywood reboots in general.
It’s not a satire of big budget Hollywood films, such as Tropic Thunder, however. No, it is a story of friendship first, and movie-making second.
Best friends?
Doug, Griff, Claire, and Kenny are absolutely ridiculous human beings. There’s a similar vibe to Anchorman here, where anything and everything that happens doesn’t tend to effect each character’s goal or emotional state. It’s an absurdist film, for sure, one that’s tone is diabolically artificial.
These characters interact in such selfish ways, and while they do all care about each other, the decisions and logic they each follow is really quite bonkers. It all makes for a highly entertaining watch. You can never be sure where the story will be taken, or how any single character will react in the moment.
As a PG-13 movie, it also proves that you don’t need excessive vulgarity in a film for it to be funny. And it is very funny.
Equal parts exciting and idiotic
With all of these goofy aspects comes a pretty great genre movie to boot. The action/thriller sequences of the story are fun to watch and keep you guessing as to who will make it to the climactic and over the top ending. At times, my friend and I were actually jumping in our seats, nervous to see who would get got.
So, as an adventure movie, it works quite well. As an action movie, it pulls no punches. But it’s the fact that the cinematic quality being upheld is simultaneously featuring some of the most hilariously strange and awkward dialogue I’ve ever heard. So many damn lines took me off guard, and I can’t wait to show this movie around.
It’s almost like a magic trick. At first, you’ll be convinced that the real life film crew has taken this premise somewhat seriously. The further down river we go this notion quickly dissipates, and it’s total spoof nature is revealed in incredibly funny ways.
The lost art of the spoof
I was very much expecting for this movie to be a disappointment. I’m so glad I was wrong. Movies defying my expectations is what gets me in the theater in the first place.
The humor, at times, is sophomoric, stale, and pretty moronic. But Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten revel in it. They plant some pretty lame scenes throughout their movie, so that when the big laughs start, they hit you hot and heavy.
There’s a certain frequency with this film that you must tune into, and for that reason, I cannot wait to watch it again with others who haven’t seen it. While the humor doesn’t always land, neither does the drama. In fact, the drama is what becomes the humor. It’s all much more trippy than I can really express in words.
It seems Gormican has cracked a code of sorts. I was consistently giggling, or cackling, or rolling around in my seat laughing, depending on the joke. What starts off as intentionally trite unravels itself into a beautifully wacky comedy of blockbuster proportions. I don’t know how they got away with it, but thank God!
Make ’em laugh
Last year saw a great return to form for comedy movies. Splitsville was hysterical. The Naked Gun was a proper spoof reboot. And even Weapons brought back the perfectly balanced horror/comedy genre. But Anaconda is a whole different breed.
To get such high profile comedic actors on board with this whole idea was probably pretty easy. Who wouldn’t want to make a movie about remaking a bad movie, in turn making a bad movie that is supposed to be funny by being a bad movie? Am I right?
I’m happy to see such a care-free and goofy movie being green-lit and executed with reckless abandon. We really need more films like this, ones that simply don’t give a hoot about awards, critics, or trying to please any film snobs, of which there are far too many. Anaconda laughs in the face of movie making, as it should!
Anaconda is now playing in theaters. See it while you still can!
