Anaconda - Great nineties monster-munching fun

There are a lot of 'monster-munching' films and most are pretty bad and don't leave any impression on you whatsoever. 'Anaconda' is not one of those.  Although it offers absolutely nothing new in terms of… well, anything, it's still entertaining enough to stick in your mind and not make you think you wasted an hour and a half of your life watching it.  As you might imagine, 'Anaconda' is about a snake - a pretty damn big one!  A crew of people (do you care about most of them?  Do you really need to wonder what's going to happen to most of them?) are travelling down a river that's well off the beaten paths of the Amazon because they're doing something that requires them being there.  Again, do you care?  They could be filming a documentary.  They could be researching the meaning of life.  All you need to know is that a load of disposable characters are cut off from civilisation and at the mercy of one nasty slithering menace.  And J-Lo!

I've pretty much summed up everything you need to know about the film in the opening paragraph.  If you're a fan of 'good bad-movies' then you'll probably enjoy it, but there are definitely a few things that need to be mentioned.  Namely casting… A practically unrecognisable Jennifer Lopez headlines the film and - amazingly if you've seen 'Gigli' - gives a reasonable enough performance when compared to other output in the genre.  She's part of the team that consists of Ice Cube, the most British Britishman you've ever seen (or 'discount Richard E Grant' as I like to call him), Owen Wilson (before he was well-known), the ginger guy from ‘The Fly II,’ a handful of others who are even less memorable and therefore will end up disappearing down the snake's throat.  And Jon Voight - as the snake.

No, Jon Voight doesn't really play the snake (I'll get to that later).  However, he basically plays a snake in human form.  Or at least that's my conclusion based on the amount of 'hissing' he seems to participate in during his time on screen.  He actually plays a 'snake hunter,' but, if the snake is the film's 'true star' then he is certainly the second best person on screen in terms of sheer entertainment.  The snake itself is (primarily) computer-generated and I remember watching this in the cinema back when it was released in 1997 and thinking, "Wow!  That's amazing special effects!" Sadly, the effects haven't faired that well in the twenty or so years since this was released and you'll have to be a little bit more forgiving when watching (you'll probably see better CGI on your average cereal advert these days!).

Basically, if you like silly, slightly campy, monster-munching films, you should enjoy this.  It knows what it is and never really tries to be anything else.  Don't expect too much in terms of character development or revolutionary story-telling and you won't be disappointed.  The only thing you may be disappointed about is if you sat down to watch this film based on Danny Trejo's name.  Yes, he is in it... but only just!

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that