ANACONDA

Despite owning this on VHS and DVD I’d never gotten around to watching it, so it was late on Easter night me and the missus decided to give this a go on Netflix. I like the idea of a killer snake, I like the idea of putting J-Lo and Ice Cube together in a movie (with a younger Owen Wilson) and a cameo from Danny Trejo (who as usual dies within 5 minutes of making his on screen appearance) so on paper this should have been a great old ride of a movie.

Unfortunately we couldn’t have been more wrong. Anaconda was basically a huge pile of shit. There were inconsistencies with the technical aspects of the film and the acting sucked. That was weird because I’ve always thought everyone in film was decent enough in any other film I’d seen them in. A lot things that just didn’t make sense. No effort in the finer points of film making was put into this one. Goes to show how much the director and tech aspects of a film can make or break it. The shame of it was the actual anaconda looked quite good. There was just no effort put into superimposing it on to the film as there was different lighting and it looked really “pasted on” so to speak.

THE PLOT OF ANACONDA

Basically it’s a simple plot. An annoying pommie film maker is embarking on a trip down the amazon to film a documentary. He hires a team of assistants including the aforementioned Ice Cube, J-Lo, Owen Wilson and Jon Voight (Deliverance) along with a couple of others to complete the crew. The skipper of the boat they hire gets eaten by a giant anaconda which basically kiboshes the whole idea of the doco. The character played by John Voight (I’d have thought after Deliverance he’d be sick to death of rivers) decides to changed the mission into filming the capture of the giant snake. Does he succeed or fail massively? Well thats where you’ll have to watch the film to find out!

Now here’s what scares me more than an actual anaconda or any horror depicted in the film. This film managed to gross $130 million at the box office. It opened at the number one spot and held it another week after that. That is a huge gross, putting it firmly in the mainstream which much better films from all genres. How did this stinker even get a cinema hall showing? It boggles the mind thats or sure. Maybe the star power in the film projected it into mainstream success despite the general shittyness of the film. I have no explaination for this.

Anyway make your own choice and proceed with caution. Don’t pay too much for this if you buy it physically or better yet just stream it so you don’t waste any hard earned on it.

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THE VERDICT ON ANACONDA

OK, the CGI graphics on this film were shit. Camera work was also shit. There’s also some aspects of the plot which worried me. There’s moments where you see the guys jump into the amazon with sticks of dynamite and somehow they are able to swim to a barricade and the dynamite is dry enough to blow up the barricade. Another incident where you see people sailing a boat in water that is shallow enough to wade across. There’s more too but no point stressing too hard about it all here.