THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

Being the perfectionist I am, I’ve kept a close eye on my Letterboxd statistics for 2025, and I currently have 248 films in my diary. With Marty Supreme on the docket for tomorrow, I needed to get something else in to make it number 250, so Anaconda at 9:45pm it was. I wanted to see this movie anyway, so even though the circumstances weren’t ideal, I was excited regardless.

I was definitely prepared for this spiritual sequel—as Jack Black put it—to be terrible like its predecessor, but I quite enjoyed this one, actually. What Anaconda (1997) lacked in technical prowess and script refinement, Anaconda (2025) had—maybe not in spades, but it was there. While the VFX still weren’t anything special, they also weren’t laughably terrible like they were in 1997. The script was also way more cohesive, slightly more layered, and super fun. Though I probably would’ve preferred a story that stayed more focused on the anaconda and ditched the gold miner subplot, this script’s depth was appreciated.

Anaconda (2025) was also so much funnier than the first one, thanks in no small part to Jack Black, Paul Rudd, and, surprisingly, Selton Mello, who absolutely ate it up in his limited screen time. Steve Zahn was a little uneven, but I really enjoyed the rest of the cast. Jack Black thrives in these insane, open scripts, and he was easily the best part of the team here. He did his whole thing, physical and boisterous and clever, and it was great. I also enjoyed the pair of cameos from the original film’s stars, especially Ice Cube’s, since he was an actual part of the plot.

As a pure popcorn comedy, I don’t have all that much to say about Anaconda (2025), because it did exactly what it was asked to do, which was admittedly not a lot. I much prefer this sort of resurrection of an IP—one that doesn’t copy and paste the original story, and that knows how to poke fun at the source material without losing the fans of said source material. I’ll take Anaconda (2025) over most Disney live-action remakes strictly in terms of novelty, but it’s hard to say that those aren’t better finished products. Even with its obvious flaws, I enjoyed Anaconda (2025), and I can’t wait for Marty Supreme to absolutely blow it out of the water tomorrow.