Anaconda (1997)

People are voting emotionally.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

A "National Geographic" film crew is taken hostage by an insane hunter, who takes them along on his quest to capture the world's largest - and deadliest - snake. If there's a definition of a bad/good/over the top and corny pop corn action film then that is definitely the 1997 original Anaconda starring Ice Cube, Jennifer Lopez, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Hyde, Owen Wilson and Danny Trejo and although the movie has some pretty bad cgi, over the top acting and action it's still a great horror film and easily the best of all this Snake films it's fun, action packed and has a lot of great tension and after all this years it still screams 90's to me.

Anaconda is a wonderful movie. These people travel through the waters of the Amazon Rainforest looking for a tribe to make a documentary about them. They run into a man who they rescue and he turns out to be a maniac who wants to catch an anaconda alive. The movie has great scenes that are very creepy and scary. The big anacondas in this are bigger, faster, and more aggressive than real green anacondas but that was necessary to make a good horror movie. Some of the great scenes are when you see the shape of a man inside a snake that ate him. And when you see a snake swallowing a man from inside the snake. It's as if the camera is inside the snake and you see it's mouth or throat open and the man go inside it. And when a baby anaconda wraps around a mans finger and tries to eat it.

Let me tell you about a little film called Anaconda. I watched this film a dozen times as a kid, I loved monster flicks. Anaconda was bad, it was utterly bad, yet I've seen it more times than I want to admit. Now we visit it again, years later, so we can laugh at how ridiculous this film is. We open with Danny Trejo, for some reason they dubbed his lines. He doesn't speak English, but the voice the use is so much higher than what we all know to be the gravel voice of Trejo. Just something that I found funny.The monster effects are laughably bad at times and worse at others. When the snake is animatronic, the obviousness of it all makes it seems like a bad ride at universal. Then we have the CGI effects, which make the snake seem like it doesn't even belong on the screen. The first attack on a human, the entire thing looks like one giant blur. The first time we see the snake in general isn't with some Jaws like reveal, it's simply the thing slithering around in the jungle before it attacks a puma. No big reveal, no slow reveal...just the damn snake out in the open. In Ebert's review of the film, which is enthusiastically gave a thumbs up, he claims Jon Voight delivers a brave and slimy performance. That I can agree with, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a great performance. It's without a doubt, memorable, but in the campy way. He glares at almost everyone on the screen, his skin is slimy like a snake and immediately untrustworthy. No one else seems to think they are in a bad movie here. Voight seems to know this from the get go. Watch this film and then watch The Room and tell me the performances from them are not almost identical. Is he doing DeNiro? Is he doing Brando? Who the hell knows. It's one wacky performance, that much is a guarantee. This was one of the early Jennifer Lopez films that probably helped launch her career. Why? I don't know, she doesn't offer anything interesting here. Ice Cube and Owen Wilson play against their usual type, I don't think we've seen either of them in a monster flick since this one, Suffice to say, Anaconda is a bad film that boarders on being highly enjoyable. Sit back, laugh and enjoy the absurdity of Anaconda. If you take this film seriously...at all, even for one second, then you will utterly hate it.

Anaconda first and foremost is a stupid film. The film makers make no attempt to be anything else. It is something of a Jaws rip off, only with Jon Voight with a European accent replacing Robert Shaw, Ice Cube replacing Roy Scheider and Jennifer Lopez and Eric Stoltz playing an amalgamation of the Richard Dreyfuss role. Only instead of running from a fake looking shark that we don't see much and brought to life using practical effects, they are running from a fake looking snake, brought to life using CGI that we see far too much.having settled that the film is intentionally stupid, the main question then becomes is it fun? Fortunately for Anaconda, I think it is quite a fun movie. There's not a lot of emotional investment in the characters who are all straight from the cookie cutter, but the actors seem well aware of this. Voight especially is hamming it up, chewing scene after scene. Owen Wilson and Danny Trejo drop in to be slaughtered. Jennifer Lopez runs around in a wet t-shirt and the snake catches a man in mid air who's jumped off a waterfall.The film does not engage the viewers brain at all, but to its credit, doesn't try to. This is B-Grade Saturday matinée fun with a cast full of future and past A-Listers and a bigger budget than the subject matter deserves. At worst a guilty pleasure and at best a fun little film that is entertaining in its own right.