DIRECTOR: Luis Llosa

CAST: Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, Jonathan Hyde, Owen Wilson, Kari Wuhrer, Vincent Castellanos, Danny Trejo

REVIEW:

Much like 1995’s The Ghost and the Darkness, Anaconda is another hokey ’90s creature feature that tries to do for its designated “monster” what Jaws, the grand daddy of them all, did for sharks. With The Ghost and the Darkness, it was a pair of man-eating lions. With the simply-titled Anaconda (recalling the B-movie Piranha), its giant people-swallowing snakes in the depths of the Amazonian jungle. And much like the previous Jaws wannabe, Anaconda just can’t get the hang of this sort of thing. But unlike the lion movie, that was self-serious to a sometimes unintentionally comical extent, Anaconda at least has a goofy, campy element, and its level of intentional tongue-in-cheek humor, while not going all-out with it on as fun of a level as Tremors, has led to it becoming a “so bad it’s good” cult classic that can be enjoyed on a silly level as long as you’re not trying to take it too seriously.