Short Takes

Believe it or not, Anaconda was a pretty goldang important movie! Not because it starred J-Lo or featured Jon Voight inexplicably aping Al Pacino's "Say jell-o to my rittle fren!" accent from Scarface. Rather it was essentially the Scream of its genre by sparking an absolute CRUSH of creature features. But unlike the neuvo slasher, this is a trend that reveals few signs of relenting regardless of how picked clean the stable of vicious varmints appears. B-filmmakers have conjured scads of low-rent CGI snakes, sharks, gators, bats, insects and spiders of all proportions and origins for foreign theatrical and domestic cable markets that just L-O-V-E to see big, bad Mama Nature's minions run amok. (Spiders, Komodo and the big-budget Eight Legged Freaks being particular standouts.) Hard to believe it took SEVEN years for this sequel to bellycrawl its way to the trough or that it'd be this vapidly unimaginative. No need to waste time with the pharmaceutical-folly wrought plot, but let's just say it's sadly telling when even the words "Snake Orgy" can't stir the loins of CineSchlockers. By the way, just how much more obnoxiously offensive could Eugene Byrd's sassy-computer-whiz-turned Stepin Fetchit be? Makes Kelly Rowland's tiresome sista girl schtick in Freddy vs. Jason seem Shakespearean. No breasts. Six corpses. Snake cam. Gratuitous voting-off-island reference. Criminal CGI shenanigans. Croc rassling. Gratuitous raft-building sequence. Spooky burial ground wandering. Excessive monkey closeups. Gratuitous Jaws schtick. Bushwhacking. A typical freakified bon mot from Mr. Byrd: "JUST BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT PRACTICING HEAD HUNTERS DOESN'T MEAN THEY DON'T REMEMBER!!!"

2004, 97 mins, 2.40:1 anam/Fullframe, DD 5.1, Featurette, Deleted scenes, Trailers.