Anaconda

Bomb Rating: 

This is the first film developed by CL Cinema Line Films Corporation. With any luck, it will be the last.

Among other pathetic things, "Anaconda" contains a performance by Jon Voight that is so awful and so full of clichés, that thirty years from now, 10-year-old bullies who happen to rent the film will be beating the crap out of Voight's great-grandchildren just for being related to him.

Voight plays Paul Sarone, a Paraguayan snake hunter who's picked up by a boatload of documentary filmmakers on a river in the Brazilian rainforest. Of course, the astute filmmakers -- anthropologist Steven Cale (Eric Stoltz), director Terri Flores (Jennifer Lopez), cameraman Danny (Ice Cube), sound mixer Gary (Owen Wilson), production manager Denise (Kari Wuhrer) and narrator Warren Westridge (Jonathan Hyde) -- have no idea that Sarone the snake hunter is hunting snakes.

The first thing Sarone does is assess the crew's capabilities and eliminate the person most likely to kick his ass. Sarone immediately establishes his genius by picking Eric Stoltz because, as everybody knows, those thin, upper-class white boys can really be a handful when they learn the boat has run out of toilet paper. Sarone doesn't actually kill Stoltz; rather, he just incapacitates him long enough for Stoltz to regain consciousness toward the end of the film and stab him in the back with something.

Ultimately, the large computerized snakes aren't so much the curiosity as Voight's perpetual frown and appalling Mexican pimp accent (which sounds like Cheech Marin trying to do an impression of himself). This is the first film developed by CL Cinema Line Films Corporation. With any luck, it will be the last.

To spread the word about this Anaconda review on Twitter.