"Anaconda," Or The Art Of The Schlemiel

    As far as I'm concerned, any movie starring Jack Black is a must see,

...as is almost any movie starring Paul Rudd.

       So when some casting director came up with the sublime idea of an on-screen paring of the two in the action-comedy-horror movie "Anaconda," of course it was for me a doubly must-see,  the 48% Rotten Tomatoes rating be hanged.

       That being said, of the 50% of this year's critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated movies that I saw, I thought a couple of them were okay, and the rest either awful, boring, or depressing.  So, yes, my cinematic tastes frequently diverge with those of the critics.
        Besides, these days I tend to be looking for laughs, or at least escape, both of which "Anaconda," happily, delivered in bucketsful when I watched it a few night ago.
      Now, this  "Anaconda,"  is not to be mistaken for a  remake of the beloved 1997 cult classic,

...the story of a giant snake out to gobble up a group of intrepid Amazon venturers (some of them at cross purposes, of course), among them J Lo, Ice Cube and Jon Voight,

...which, popular as it continues to be,  was likewise on the receiving end of the film critics' scorn.

       The 2025 Jack Black-Paul Rudd "Anaconda"  was, however, an offshoot of the 1997 "Anaconda," as Thandiwe Newton and Steve Zahn at his most hilarious join Black and Rudd,

...as a quartet of old friends, non-achievers living lives of not-so-quiet desperation, who, yearning to make something meaningful of their existence, decide to pursue their childhood group dream of being film makers by going to the Amazon and filming a remake of the the 1997 "Anaconda" movie. 
       Needless to say, little goes as planned as the crew bungles their way down the Amazon with their jovial snake handler and his pet snake, who is to be the star of their show, 

...and the boat's captain, a mysterious woman who is obviously (to the audience if not to the other characters) not what she seems, though exactly what she is we won't learn for a while. 

      However, we and  the characters do learn soon enough that in this stretch of the Amazon there does in fact exist a giant monster anaconda on the prowl for human prey. 

       And so the characters find themselves living the movie they were planning on making.
       Along with the plentiful jump-scares and hair's breadth snake-escape moments, there are just as many scenes that set up the joke then spring the comic twist, often in the schlemiel/schlimazel model: someone fumbles, someone else is on the receiving end of the fumble. In other words, the schlemiel spills their soup and the schlimazel is the poor schmo the soup lands on. 
          The characters take turns back and forth being the schlemiel and the schlimazel, with even the pet snake ending up in one scene being the schlimazel to Paul Rudd's schlemiel.

      And one of the funniest scenes you'll see in any movie is schlimazel Jack Black running away from the monster anaconda with a pig strapped to his back,        

...thanks to the bumbling of his schlemiel friends.

       So, I recommend you skip the Academy Award winners and settle in for an hour and a half of laughs and scares with "Anaconda."
        Oh, but make sure you watch the original "Anaconda" first. That will make it so much more fun.