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 Anacondas

Screen Gems is trying to make a movie franchise out of Anaconda, the 1997 stinker that starred J. Lo when she was known as Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube when he was known as a rapper, and Jon Voight when he was known as talented and respectable. Shockingly, Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid is campy fun in a twisted way. It's not very good, but you can get some laughs out of it.

In Anacondas, a diverse, rag tag crew of scientists, capitalists and ship's crew head off into the jungles of Borneo to find a rare flower, the blood orchid, which only blooms every seven years, and will go dormant in about two weeks (and you know that it can't be good when BLOOD is in the name, these things have names like that for a reason!). Led by pharmaceutical developer Gordon (Morris Chestnut) and his co-leader Gail (Salli Richardson), the group of 8 (plus one monkey, who might be the best actor of the group) boards a rickety old boat (uh-oh) to harvest fields full of the flower, which could provide a fountain of youth-type medicine that will make them all rich. Of course, the rickety old boat doesn't hold up (darn!), and the gang needs to hike through the jungle to get to safety. Oh, and the jungle is full of hungry, horny anaconda snakes who are chasing a female in heat during mating season, and growing larger than they ever should because they might be eating the flower. These are some big snakes. Huge. Think King Kong as a snake. Yeah, that's big.

Who will survive? Who will be anaconda food?

Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid is a stereotypical campy horror film with some thrills and plenty of laughs (half of which are intentional). All of the formula elements are present like sexual tension between women in clingy, wet tank tops and men in sweaty, form-fitting t-shirts that show off their abs of steel (as opposed to my abs of Krispy Kreme); constant outbursts from the comic relief character, Cole (Eugene Byrd); our Crocodile Dundee-like outdoorsman/ship's captain, Bill (Johnny Messner); the one guy who will do anything to satisfy his greed; characters fighting for lives against evil snakes and crocodiles; and basic, meaningless dialogue that only exists to move the story along instead of exciting us or getting us involved emotionally. Anacondas doesn't bring anything new to the franchise, but almost lost me with its devotion to the worst elements of the genre.

Our four writers and director Dwight Little go to the comic relief well too much. Cole spends almost the entire movie ranting and raving about how scared he is and cracking more one-liners than David Chappelle or Rodney Dangerfield. It starts to grate on you after a while. His performance is eclipsed by the mascot monkey's performance, which is full of dramatic close-ups of him reacting to the people being eaten, warning others of impending doom and dismissing Cole's constant comedic rants. Give this monkey the Oscar! He's funnier and handles the drama with more aplomb.

Also, I was disappointed with the computer-generated snakes, who have too much personality. I know it's a movie, but snakes don't look as devious and devilishly happy when attacking their prey as these do. Jaws was scary because the shark moved in with reckless, nonchalant abandon. The most chilling part of the movie is when Quint tells us about their cold, dead eyes, and we get it. Snakes are the same way if you watch them on Animal Planet. By giving the snakes personality, our creative team takes us a bit further out of reality, which we don't need when they want to wrap us up in the drama of our gang's plight.

Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid is good for a laugh and a mindless Saturday night out and about with your buddies.

2 Waffles (Out Of 4)

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