As inescapable as a grimace from Ice-Cube, we live in a world of remakes, reboots, sequels, and prequels. What's worse is that even the best of the few original programs that come our way would have barely moved the needle past middling twenty years ago. Of the seemingly unending disappointments served up year after year, comedies have been hit the hardest. Anaconda (2025) doesn't break the unfortunate streak.

If one word sums up Anaconda, it is 'undefined.' The movie reads more like a film outline than even a first draft, with no sense of each character's place in the story or even what type of film it is. The filmmakers seem either unable or unwilling to fully commit to the premise. Instead of going all in we get watered-down characters who consist of little more than Paul Rudd, Jack Black, and Steve Zahn, alternating between looking lost and mugging for the camera as they navigate an aimless story that tries and fails to walk the line between serious action flick and parody.

Thandiwe Newton, who's a fine enough actress, is completely miscast and exhibits absolutely zero comedic sensibilities or chemistry with the rest of the cast, not that anyone could with this mess. Between the three leading male characters, only Zahn swings for the fences. True, his character is given a hook that lends itself to behaving like an early 2000s Zahn character (think Saving Silverman). However, his co-star in that underappreciated comedy gem, Jack Black, seems to have forgotten how to act sometime before the travesty that was Dear Santa, and gives the most decaffeinated performance of his life. Rudd, arguably the best actor of the bunch—certainly the most pedigreed—turns in a performance best described as an ironically flat parody of his usual schtick.

With a solid premise tailor-made for the easiest layup hijinks, and a cast mostly comprised of proven comedy veterans, the bulk of the blame for Anaconda's failure on all fronts must then lie on the shoulders of its writer/director, Tom Gormican. Gormican, best known for writing the middling Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F for Netflix, delivers a bomb not worth detonating. It's a film so bafflingly inert it almost feels like sabotage—of its cast, of its source material, and of whatever goodwill audiences had left for yet another unnecessary resurrection of a dormant IP.

In the end, the only thing Anaconda (2025) really captures is the exhaustion of an industry running on fumes. Like so many modern studio comedies, it confuses reference for humor and noise for energy, confident that nostalgia will fill in the blanks. It won’t. Not this time. If you’re starving for a creature feature or desperate to see Rudd, Black, and Zahn occupy the same frame, wait for streaming. Otherwise, let this one slither by. There are better ways to spend your time.