ANACONDA (PG-13)
A Film Review By Fernando Vallejo
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RATING (OUT OF ****): ** 1/2
A human has just been gulped by a 40 foot serpent. The reptilian then proceeds to chase someone else and when it's ready to consume it's latest prey, it suddenly spits out the person it has just swallowed. Not only that but the man, mangled and deformed as in a cocoon, winks and then falls flat down on the floor. Laughter overflowed my astonishment, as if the filmmakers were in on the joke from the get-go.
That is the basic premise for ANACONDA, an unrestrained, sometimes raunchy, hilarious suspenser replete with inconceivable situations, and even more unthinkable, cheesy B-movie momentoes that work more effectively as mass entertainment than, say, THE SAINT. Pinpointing the better instances would ruin the experience of laughing out loud while simultaneously finding yourself rooting for the nebulous characters.
As every chiller nowadays, ANACONDA begins with an irrelevant scene whose purpose is to demonstrate the raw power of the lizard. A man is calling for help to some sort of station, since `something` is lurking towards him ( we can tell because the camera rotates left and right). As the poor sap gets frantically paranoid, the snake destroys half the boat, and there is no other solution but for the man to climb all the way to the top and take his life with a revolver.
Okay, so the prologue has been instituted, now the movie can officially start. The soon hunter Dr. Steven Cale ( Eric Stoltz ), an aesthete in finding lost tribes who leads an expedition into the sweltering, damp Amazon jungle where USC student director Terri Flores ( Jennifer Lopez, in her third film of the year ) is shooting a documentary about the tribal experience. Among the ciphers included in the crew is the cool, hip cameraman Danny Rich (Ice Cube), the misplaced Brit narrator Warren Westridge (Jonathan Hyde), who practices golf strokes and listens to classical music, and production manager Denise and sound mixer Gary (who are also a couple in which the Anaconda catches at the worst possible time) respectively played by Kari Wuhrer and Owen Wilson.
For the initial fifteen minutes or so, the movie is a bad case of terribly unimaginative and slow paced execution with artificial dialogue and inane altercations, but this all changes when the crew rescue Paul Sarone (a droll Jon Voight), an idiosyncratic and quite creepy Paraguayan snake hunter who uses the boat as his personal chase to recuperate the viper alive for big bucks, but the crew doesn't realize this yet. He does give malignant stares and assumes a certain amount of distrust in his over-the-top Paraguayan accent.
Voight's performance is what gives ANACONDA the much-needed jolt to elevate the material into truly satisfying escapism. His cryptic, enigmatic looks and bad, bad intentions make him an outstanding figure in these formulaic thrillers, not since Andrei Konchalovsky's RUNAWAY TRAIN has he had a juicier role and displayed it with a substantial amount of energy and durability.
Aside from Voight, ANACONDA is a fatuous, prosaic exercise in delivering cheap thrills in a usually slow moviegoing period of a year. There are the washed up circumstances, the recycled `plot` twists and desperately desperate one liners. ( The notable one is Ice Cube's remark: ` Man, I'm gettin' the hell back to L.A ` ). Yet, accusing ANACONDA from its obvious problems would be like snatching a five year-old's toy. In movies like ANACONDA logistics are eschewed to assure incredulous flexibility.
The real star is the 40ft snake, a swaying, hand made creature which loses its visceral charge when it attacks its victims, then it becomes a case of visibly unripe animatronics. In the history of Hollywood snakes, I don't recall a more colossal one than this one, commanded by director Luis Llosa with the common sense of a Roger Corman OUTER LIMITS episode. When the camera starts moving slowly and Randy Edelman's inviting score kicks in, it is as inviting as pie, the snake wants to snack again. No spontaneous attacks here.
Scriptwriters Hans Bauer, Jim Cash and Jack Epps, Jr. are actually interested in rendering the rituals the anaconda practices right before eating. ` You get the privilege of having your bones break before the power of their embrace causes your veins to explode, ` Sarone says at one point. There is even a gruesome shot in which we're inserted into the thing's esophagus, as his latest victim is filling it up.
And of course, we are subjected to a lonely eyeball, plenty of dead bodies, explosions, chases, and totally unfounded scenes. (Sarone spills a gallon or so of monkey blood over two of the crew members ).
The adequate manner to classify ANACONDA is not classifying it at all. I'd call it an ecologically violent, bone-crunching, heart pounding, nail biting, half-witted , JAWS-in-the-jungle rip-off. It's musty, alright, but not flavorless. (1:30)
(C) Fernando Vallejo 1998
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