Friday, July 26, 2024

One Good Point (Movie) - Anaconda

 Oh man.

So as most of you know, I enjoy a good monster movie. Jurassic Park is probably my all-time favorite movie, and Jaws is right there with it. I was pretty sure Anaconda wasn't going to hit those highs, but even cheesy monster movies can be pretty fun if you've got a good cast, and theoretically, this movie had a good cast. Jennifer Lopez has had some good roles, Jon Voight as well, plus Owen Wilson and Ice Cube. And I'll watch pretty much anything with Kari Wurher (if you're a big time perv and haven't seen Kate's Addiction, phew, go do that. But don't tell me about it, perv).

But very early in the movie, you realize that no, no this isn't that. Somehow both the practical and CGI versions of the giant snake are unimpressive. I'm sure the visuals reflect the in-world descriptions, a 40-foot long snake, but it just doesn't measure up to the bigger, scarier monsters in the better monster movies. The dialogue is often ridiculous; shortly after a scene where multiple people are killed, two of the characters are joking about creature comforts like wine and cell phones. It's completely disjointed, and takes away from the tension of the movie. If this guy is only worried about getting his next pinot noir, why should I be worried about the giant killer snake?

By far the most incredible aspect of the movie is Jon Voight though. I can't fathom how this even happened, unless someone owed Voight some money or people just deferred to Voight out of respect, but this is an absolute debacle. Like, to the point that it can only have been done in jest. No one could have seriously watched his performance in this movie and said, "This is a thing I want to be associated with." There's other bad acting and terrible dialogue in the movie too, but Voight is a tour de force of catastrophe.

Overall, I'm perfectly glad to have finally seen the movie. It's wildly bad, but now I know that it's wildly bad, and I can be conversant about how bad it is. And it sets the stage for (hopefully) a near future monster movie that rises to the occasion.

If you'd (for some reason) like to watch Anaconda right now, click here to use JustWatch to find out where you can stream it!

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