By Tracey Fox
3.5 Stars
CHRISTMAS is finally over and you’re probably looking for a break to indulge in some laughs.
Directed by Tom Gormican, who co-wrote it with Kevin Etten, Anaconda – rated M – is indeed a worthy couple of hours of silly escapism.
Jack Black and Paul Rudd play two old high-school media chums having a life affirming adventure through the jungle; with a number of varying enormous snakes to avoid.
If the title didn’t already give it away, Anaconda is “very snakey” to quote the movie itself.
If you suffer any kind of ophidiophobia (that means fear of snakes, I had to look it up too) this is probably not for you.
There are a few and they are scary.
But if you’re into the monster-horror comedy sub-genre you will get some good chuckles out of this movie, as well as a few well-timed jump scares.
Doug (Black) and Griff (Rudd) gather a small crew of misfits to remake their own version of an Anaconda movie and head out to the jungle to guerilla-style shoot a low budget masterpiece.
There isn’t a huge plot here, so I’ll try to not give any spoilers away.
Big snakes, in varying degrees of huge and of course they are a threat.
In a style similar to Tropic Thunder 2008 (Black is one of the stars) they hire a boat and skeleton crew and try to shoot a movie on the fly.
Unfortunately, some of them get removed from the movie as the snake takes a chomp out of one of them every few minutes.
I’ve got to leave a few surprises, so I’ll stop there.
As a reviewer who never much indulged in the horror genre until recently, I can say Anaconda is a perfectly acceptable holiday offering, with the chuckles nicely balanced between the gross-out slimy scenes and the big scary CG (computer graphic) snippets of enormous snake.
This is not meant to be an intellectual movie, so you can enjoy safely leaving your brain at home for a break.
