Ahh yes, Anaconda. This is the movie I blame for single-handedly causing a glut on the home video market from companies like Nu Image of many, many similarly themed "giant creature" movies (with such original titles as Spiders and Crocodile) that are packed to the gills with clichéd characters and weak CGI effects. The sad thing is that this really isn't much better than its followers.

A total B-movie parading about as a major Hollywood studio film, this has Jennifer Lopez as the head of a documentary crew who are hired to go along the Amazon with scientist Eric Stoltz in order to try and uncover the location of a long-lost tribe of Natives. Things are going alright until the run across Sarone (Jon Voight who's sporting a lousy accent, is given bad dialogue and who is obviously evil due to the fact he squints all the damn time) whos boat is sinking. They take him aboard only for Stoltz to become incapacitated when he's stung by a poisonous wasp that was conveniently placed in his diving gear (an event that throws Stoltz onto the backburner almost the entire movie flashing back to him lying in a bed once in a while so we don't forget about him).

Soon Sarone, a character meant to be a human villain to off-set the snake, is telling everyone all about the anaconda snakes that are in the area and before you can say "evil scheme" he's taken control of the ship and is leading them into imminent danger as they start getting attacked by a huge, and quite angry, anaconda that's out for human blood.

Director Luis Llosa has made a few B-movies in his past (like 1988's Crime Zone) and you can tell as Anaconda plays out more like a cheeseball creature feature than anything - be it a more polished one sporting a cast of mostly familiar faces (rapper Ice Cube and Owen Wilson, to name a few). That's not to say it's completely a bad thing as there are numerous unintentional chuckles to be had, especially during the finale at the factory (which is the most exciting thing here since most of the first two-thirds of the movie wanted to focus on Voight's lame baddie).

However this is still a completely passable time and that's mostly because the anaconda is fairly absent for the first hour and when it does show-up it's rendered in such fake looking CGI that we're never afraid of it at all. And it's hard to forgive the scripters for giving Voight so much screen time as he's probably the worst thing here.

Followed by a sequel. (Chris Hartley, 7/21/05)

Directed By: Luis Llosa.
Written By: Hans Bauer, Jim Cash, Jack Epps, Jr.

Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz.