A "National Geographic" film crew is taken hostage by an insane hunter, who takes them along on his quest to capture the world's largest - and deadliest - snake.
cast
Eric Stoltz as Dr. Steven Cale Ice Cube as Danny Rich Jennifer Lopez as Terri Flores Jon Voight as Paul Sarone Kari Wuhrer as Denise Kalberg Owen Wilson as Gary Dixon
When I reviewed RUMBLE IN THE BRONX and said that I did not particularly like the movie, one person wrote me to say that not every film has to be so serious and that Americans make very few "fun" films. That came to me as something of a shocker since I had thought that the majority of feature films made in this country in the 90s were "fun" films, or at least intended that way. I grew up when the 50s science fiction films were hitting television and for me a fun film is something not unlike Jack Arnold's THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. Arnold's Amazon opus is not a good film by any objective standard but is a sort of a dark pleasure. The new ANACONDA is not even enough unlike THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, borrowing a good deal of its plot. For me more pleasure than watching Jackie Chan kick somebody or gliding over them in a hovercraft is seeing a snake the size of a small traffic jam making mincemeat of an expedition to the Amazon. Not that ANACONDA is even a well-made rip-off of CREATURE and it would be more enjoyable with a better script, but it passes as a decent film. It is the sort of film that I peg in the back of my mind as a "drive-in" film, though in my part of the country the last drive-in died several years ago. The script of ANACONDA borrows much of its plot from THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, with a nod or two to MOBY DICK and JAWS. But let us face it, it is fun to see a recreation of a primordial battle between humans and some giant force of nature.
