Anaconda (2025)
Last Watch Date - June 23, 2026
Total Times Watched - Once
Comments
I started my day watching John Wick on the first leg of my flight. I needed a break from that sort of action and decided to switch over to this for the second flight. Good old JetBlue movie selections!
I saw promos for this movie last year and thought "that might be funny." See, I like Jack Black. I like Paul Rudd. I like Steve Zahn. This has to be a setup for a really fun movie!
The premise of this, and this is not a spoiler since it's all in the trailer, is that a few buddies want to reboot the movie Anaconda with Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, etc. While they try to do that, things go wrong and a real anaconda stalks them, starts to murder nearby people, and threatens their lives and friendship.
Hmm. Where to begin. This movie takes the well-trod trope of "friend group who has grown apart a bit but wants to get back together to relive their youth friendship again because grown up life is too hard." It doesn't really do it particularly well. I didn't feel like they had much history, nor did it feel like the chemistry was really there between the cast. Remember in I Love You, Man when you really felt like Rudd and Segal were actual best buddies? That feeling never happens in this. I think another issue with it is that the people in this movie are well older than me and I'm in my mid-40s. This type of movie works best with late 20s or possibly early 30s people because they're just getting into the real world after their childhood fully ends, realizing how much stuff sucks, and trying to relive it. The people in this movie are like mid-late 50s. I'm sorry, but these people are like grandparents.
Everything about this movie feels slightly off. I still like these actors, but Steve Zahn was great in That Thing You Do! because he was 29 and it fit. He was great in Saving Silverman because he was 34. It was believable to some extent that he was that character. I don't believe in Jack Black as a film maker-turned wedding videographer at this stage of his life wanting to relive his young teen years where they made off-beat movies. I don't buy Paul Rudd as a nearly 60 year old failed actor wanting to make movies with his high school friends. These relationships from young teen years rarely stay together, especially when people move across the country as they do in this movie.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that this movie is anachronistic in so many ways that it makes the movie less fun. Where are the new crop of actors to make this movie? There are plenty of options to do this movie with younger actors and have it turn out even better. It's like a movie made for older people with Peter Pan syndrome by older people with Peter Pan syndrome. These guys are closer to Grumpy Old Men than they are to Euro Trip and it shows. The movie feels tired.
Recommended?
No. I wish I could, but it was forgettable at best.
