Jack Black and Paul Rudd Just Made the Most Self-Aware Snake Movie in History — and Netflix Can’t Stop Watching It

In the opening scene of Anaconda (2025), Jack Black’s character Doug McCallister gives a very somber voiceover that is reminiscent of a Werner Herzog documentary or a Scorsese crime epic. However, the camera pans back to reveal that he has been narrating a wedding video. It’s the most obvious declaration of the film’s purpose: it’s about people who took something too seriously, and the irony is that they continue to do it. The movie never fully answers the question of whether that joke lasts for the full ninety minutes.
Tom Gormican, the director of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which starred Nicolas Cage in the somewhat uneven and self-aware movie The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, released Anaconda in theaters on Christmas 2025. The Gormican formula appears to be: take a genuine cultural artifact, cast the most adaptable actors you can find, and let the meta-commentary take care of the jokes. It was fairly successful with Cage. The outcomes are more inconsistent when Black and Paul Rudd chase a CGI snake through the Brazilian jungle.

In a sense, the idea is quite clever. Doug (Black), a wedding videographer who once aspired to be a real director, gathers his three closest friends, Griff (Rudd), a struggling actor whose career high point is a four-episode arc on a procedural drama; Kenny (Steve Zahn), a cameraman; and Claire (Thandiwe Newton), an actor, to go to the Amazon and create a spiritual sequel to Anaconda, the 1997 creature feature that they all adored as kids. The original was a bad movie, starring Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, and Jon Voight in an accent that is still one of the biggest mysteries in movies. However, it was the kind of movie that stuck in the minds of a certain generation, leading to four progressively worse sequels, a Chinese remake, and finally this 2025 meta-reboot that made $135 million at the box office worldwide before creeping onto Netflix.

It’s possible that the box office figure reveals more about Black and Rudd’s popularity together than it does about the film itself. Whatever happens, these two will be entertaining to watch because of their unique charisma, which serves as a social contract with the audience. For the most part, that contract is valid. Even though Rudd’s deadpan is a little older and possibly more self-deprecating than it was when he was Ant-Man, it still makes sense. Black continues to put forth a level of physical effort that would be taxing for most actors half his age. The script alludes to something genuine about middle age and unfulfilled dreams, but it doesn’t quite commit to it. They play friends who have known each other too long to be completely honest.
When the snake finally appears in its entirety, it is big enough to swallow a man whole, which is the only metric that matters to the film. Decider’s critic pointed out that the CGI is superior to the rubber-and-practical-effect serpent from 1997. That’s a low bar, and it was cleared with no fanfare. The actual horror scenes are skillful but not particularly memorable. The lighthearted moments are not offensive. The same critic noted that everything goes “squish in an unmemorable fashion.” A deep cut by Mötley Crüe serves as the soundtrack for a car chase. The movie drops a twist after a character says that every good movie needs one. The film is conscious that it is a film. That awareness is often the only joke in the room and can be endearing at times.
It’s difficult to ignore the fact that the movie feels most at ease when Black and Rudd are simply conversing, whether it’s in the Buffalo backyard during the birthday party scene or on the boat floating down a river whose name the film doesn’t bother to establish. Plot scaffolding is not necessary for their chemistry. It requires dialogue, which is sporadically included in the script. The script doesn’t bother to acknowledge that Thandiwe Newton, who has done genuinely intriguing work in movies like Westworld and Passing, is given virtually nothing to do here.
Depending on your level of tolerance for the idea, the meta-comedy angle—a movie about making a bad movie that is also a movie—falls somewhere between inspiring and draining. Because Cage’s character is genuinely bizarre enough to support the joke, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent was successful. Because the joke ultimately focuses on how awful the 1997 Anaconda was—a more specific and well-known target—Anaconda performs less well. There is a real audience for which that 1997 movie is a treasured relic of poor taste, but it might not be big enough to sustain the idea for ninety minutes without further assistance.
And yet. Reaching the top spot on Netflix within a few days of its streaming debut, creating the kind of casual goodwill that turns movies into late-night favorites and background watches, and finding an audience willing to put up with mediocrity in order to still have fun—perhaps that’s enough. Paul Rudd and Jack Black pursued a snake in the jungle. The snake was enormous. Exactly, nobody got what they came for. However, there were enough attendees that it must have been effective.