Ice Cube

Anaconda

07/01/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Christmas 2025 was a pretty fertile period for the cinema, with opportunities to catch plenty of decent offerings and, provided you picked carefully, there was not a turkey in sight. The first days of the New Year were likewise blessed, but eventually a viewer’s luck runs out. I still believe that Anaconda has a decent premise at its heart but, for a whole variety of reasons, it fails to make for satisfying viewing.

Ron Griffin (Paul Rudd) and Doug McCallister (Jack Black) both feel they have made wrong career moves. Ron always felt he was destined to be a movie star but, apart from a few fleeting cameos in various TV shows, he’s failed to make the big time. Doug maintains he is working as a film director – if you count wedding videos as movies – but he also fondly remembers his teenage years, when he and Ron recorded their own no-budget horror movies, making their own props and using their friends as actors. At Doug’s birthday get-together, Ron casually announces that he has managed to obtain the rights to Anaconda – the 1997 movie that was their favourite watch on VHS.

One drunken conversation later, and Ron has managed to persuade his old flame, Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and his hapless pal, Kenny (Steve Zahn), to flex their credit cards and accompany him to Brazil to shoot a reboot. But can they possibly persuade Doug to drop everything and join them as the film’s director? Hey, do giant reptiles live in the jungle? Well, they do of course and, in a brief pre-credit sequence, we’ve already witnessed what happens to people who stand around under trees muttering questions like, ‘What was that noise?’

To be fair, the set-up is decently handled by director Tom Gormican, who co-wrote the script with Kevin Etten. But once in Brazil, he seems unsure which direction to take with the resulting story and throws in a whole bunch of distractions. There’s a young local woman, Ana (Daniela Melchior), who is being pursued by armed men, though for quite a while we’re not entirely sure what they’re after her for. And why she would undertake to pretend to be the captain of a ship and ferry the film crew upriver is anybody’s guess.

Then there’s local snake ‘expert’ Carlos (Selton Mello) who actually owns a decent-sized pet snake and has somehow been brought onto the team as reptile-wrangler – but we’re not troubled with the details of how this came to be.

And of course there’s the titular giant snake, glimpsed only fleetingly at first, but becoming less convincing every time we set eyes on him.

The end result is that the comedy isn’t quite as sharp as it needs to be, while the action sequences are ponderous and unconvincing. Most damning of all, the scenes that (I think) are designed to be scary, really don’t generate enough tension to make me suspend my disbelief. The plot thickens when it turns out that there’s another, bigger crew in the vicinity who really are shooting an Anaconda reboot. This gives Gormican the chance to include a couple of celebrity cameos from Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, who, veteran movie fans may remember, starred in the original.

Look, I don’t want to be mean about this, because clearly it was never intended to be anything but a silly bungle in the jungle and I guess, in the end, that’s exactly what you get. And let’s face it, the original film isn’t remembered as being a cinematic masterpiece either. But no matter how slight the central premise, a film needs to convince – and sadly this one fails on that score.

2.8 stars

Philip Caveney

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

02/08/23

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Those sewer-dwelling, pizza-devouring ‘heroes in a hard-shell’ return to the big screen, courtesy of Seth Rogen and his team and it’s clear from the outset that the key word here is Teenage. The word Ninja has also been reinstated – those in the UK with long memories may recall that, for a while, Hero was used as a replacement. How times change. This film only has a PG certificate but it doesn’t hold back on the violence – and clearly the message isn’t getting through. The afternoon screening I attend features quite a few parents trying to handle confused-looking children, who clearly aren’t sure what to make of what’s happening up on the big screen.

TMNT:MM begins with a pre-credit sequence explaining the origin stories of Leonardo (Nicholas Cantu), Donatello (Micah Abbey), Michelangelo (Shamon Brown Jr) and Raphael (Brady Noon). They begin life as part of a disrupted science experiment, and are accidentally flushed down the drain into the sewers. (We’ve all been there.) Down in those malodorous depths they are adopted by friendly rat, Master Splinter (Jackie Chan), who is also affected by the chemicals they’ve absorbed and, like them, grows to be bigger than he should be. After a disastrous attempt to introduce his ‘family’ to human society, Splinter decides that people aren’t quite ready to embrace something so different so he keeps the foursome hidden below ground – but he does give them intensive martial arts training.

Now they are teenagers and itching to be out in the real world, where they can chase after girls and watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (it’s pretty clear what decade we’re in). When they see teenager April (Ayo Edebiri) being robbed of her scooter, they cannot stop themselves from helping her out, swinging into action and despatching a whole gang of tough customers with ease. But this starts a complex chain of events that will eventually lead to them taking on mutant master villain, Superfly (Ice Cube), who has dedicated himself to the task of eradicating human life from the face of the planet.

The first thing to say here is that the animation style is ravishing, borrowing some of its look from the Spider-Man animations, perhaps, but adding its own expressionistic dazzle into the process. Occasionally, the four heroes have the solidity of stop-frame animation characters; at other times, they are more fluid, more experimental – and there’s even a delightful childhood experience rendered as crayons on paper. Co-directors Jeff Rowe (of The Mitchells Versus the Machines) and Kyler Spears attempt to keep everything coherent and mostly succeed.

The script, written by Rogan and Evan Goldberg (in collaboration with several others), is obsessed with the horrors of puberty and never misses the opportunity to go for cheap belly laughs. (Want to see somebody puking uncontrollably? It’s here.) This occasionally feels like a bunch of older guys desperately trying to reconnect with their own teenage years and, inevitably, not all of the quips hit their targets as solidly as they might. It’s also true that some of the action sequences – particularly an extended set piece towards the film’s conclusion – are a little muddled at times. Who’s hitting who? With what? And… why?

Reservations aside, I have a lot of fun with this, despite the fact that I’m not a former Turtles fan and barely gave them a glance back in the 80s. It has some interesting points to make about inclusivity but it doesn’t hammer me over the head with them. However, those looking to entertain little ‘uns in the school break should be warned: unless you want to explain a giant rat snogging an enormous cockroach, this may not be the film you’re looking for. Just saying.

Oh yes, stay in your seats for the post-credit bit, which seems to suggest a follow-up is in the works.

3.7 stars

Philip Caveney