In an age where IP is king, meta-comedy Anaconda at least gets credit for its experimentations with the reboot format. The self-seriousness of the 1997 cult creature feature becomes fodder for humor in an adventure-comedy that doubles as a heartfelt musing on middle-aged missed opportunities. The type of film that fares much stronger when director Tom Gormican (The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent) leans into adventure over familiar comedy.

Bonded by a love of film but splintered by life’s responsibilities in adulthood, Anaconda reunites four childhood friends and presents them with a rare chance to follow their forgotten dreams. For Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn), that means putting a pause on life’s disappointments and venturing out into the Amazon to remake the film that defined their youths: 1997’s Anaconda. While the quartet is naturally ill-equipped to trek out into the wilderness, let alone shoot a feature film without proper backing, the film production faces even greater disaster when a real giant snake crashes the set.

Gormican, who co-writes with Kevin Etten, gleefully pokes fun at studios’ current IP obsession, earning the film’s biggest laughs through the meta film-within-a-film setup. It’s the banter over shot setups, script rewrites, and, most especially, the all-important matter of franchise rights that yields the most fascinating commentary and amusing jokes. Much like Massive Talent, Gormican wears his love of cinema on Anaconda‘s sleeves through meta plotting and humor, made even more infectious this time by a bigger cast.

Black, Rudd, Newton, and Zahn all sell the precise type of awe shucks earnestness necessary for a plot this outlandish, and the wacky scenarios their trek into the jungle demands. Newton stands out among this group of seasoned comedic pros; Claire’s timid people-pleasing ways infectiously let Newton cut loose. Daniela Melchior serves as the unenviable straightman to the wacky friend group as the boat captain, but her supporting role only exists to shepherd the plot along and nothing more. Anaconda reserves the bulk of its character development for Doug and Griff, and Claire and Kenny to a much smaller extent.

Anaconda tests the friends’ survival skills frequently, and often in the most puerile fashion. That leads to a variety of expectedly silly scenes, and not all of them land. A gag involving “pee shy” Kenny overstays its welcome, an extended scene highlighting the occasional clashes between the film’s comedy and adventure halves. 

The snake, like the film itself, draws its cues from the 1997 original in design and attitude. For a Jack Black and Paul Rudd vehicle, Gormican never strays too far from the source material and ensures a few key sequences of palpable suspense and intense action. It all builds to an appropriately explosive finale, another nod to Luis Llosa’s film and the over-the-top excess of ’90s horror. Just don’t expect it to venture far into horror. A few moments of genuine suspense aside, this is still a broad comedy.

There’s something novel about a meta-comedy that brings genuine (occasional) thrills in its examination of what a reboot can be. Gormican threads a specific needle that transforms a ’90s creature feature into a commercially friendly meta-reboot for the whole family. When focused solely on eliciting laughs through its famous stars, Anaconda falls into forgettable territory. Black and Rudd play variations of themselves, relegating Doug and Griff to serviceably sweet but bland leads swallowed up by a far more interesting reboot experiment. 

Anaconda anchors its fun structural experimentations with an affecting tale of four grown-ups manifesting another chance at happiness, and that sugary sweet core ultimately holds the bold approach together. Gormican’s continued meta filmmaking remains joyous, and with the added bonus of unpredictability, it’s tough to say where the group’s journey will end when it doesn’t adhere to the original plotting. As fun and novel as this wacky voyage into the Amazon can be, it’s the more basic comedy that can undermine what works.

Anaconda slithers into theaters on December 25, 2025.