Anaconda

Directed by Tom Gormican, Anaconda follows four friends (Jack Black’s Doug, Paul Rudd’s Ronald, Thandiwe Newton’s Claire, and Steve Zahn’s Kenny) as they travel to the Amazon to mount a low-rent remake of 1997’s Anaconda. It’s a fun, larger-than-life premise that is, at the outset, employed to entertaining effect by Gormican, as the filmmaker, armed with his and Kevin Etten’s screenplay, delivers an affable comedy that’s initially focused on the central characters’ subdued exploits within their home town – with the compulsively watchable bent of this stretch heightened by the stars’ uniformly charming efforts. There’s little doubt, then, that Anaconda begins its slow, steady descent into irrelevance (and tedium) once the action shifts to the jungle, as the picture suffers from a palpably stagnant feel that’s compounded by a recurring emphasis on questionable (and distressingly unfunny) set-pieces and digressions (eg Kenny offers to pee on a snake bite) – which, when coupled with an eye-rollingly tiresome adventure-oriented third act, ultimately confirms the movie’s place as a disappointing misfire that could (and should) be so much better.

*1/2 out of ****