Starring - Jennifer Lopez; Ice Cube; Jon Voight; Eric Stoltz & Jonathan Hyde Director - Luis Llosa MPAA - Rated PG-13 for intense adventure violence, and for brief language and sensuality. OK, so Anaconda is not going to go down in history as the greatest film ever made. For that matter, its not even anywhere near the top of the list. But it's a fun little movie none the less. You simply have to take it for what it is -- the kind of movie that you watch for some light entertainment, nothing more, nothing less. I can say that I was disappointed in one area though, and that was special effects. Before seeing this film, I kept hearing about the great snake effects. Well friends, they might have been great compared to the special effects on an old episode of Star Trek, but they weren't anything to write home about compared to what audiences are used to today. As computer generated animal effects go -- if you compared the snake in Anaconda to the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park -- these effects look downright cheesy. But that's OK, because it goes along well with the cheesy acting of most of the film's stars -- most notably, Jon Voight and his over-the-top accent. Now my guess is that this was the effect that the filmmakers were going for, because Jon Voight is just too fine an actor to give an over the top performance like this without it being intentional. Although I do think he should have put a little extra effort into what turned out to be a really bad accent. As I said, the producers seemed to want to inject an element of camp into just about every aspect of this film, and they certainly accomplished that goal. The basic premise goes something like this -- a documentary film crew is sailing up the Amazon River to make a movie. The crew includes Ice Cube and bodacious babe Jennifer Lopez. Along the way, they meet up with snake hunter Jon Voight. When one of the crew gets injured, Voight's character convinces them to take a shortcut so they can get the man back to civilization for medical attention. What they don't know is that his shortcut also happens to be the home turf of a very large, and very mean, anaconda. The anaconda, by the way, isn't accepting visitors. In Anaconda, acting and plot take a back seat to the computer-generated snake. Let's not pussyfoot around it, Anaconda is just one big showcase for the snake. It is never a good idea when little things like plot are pushed aside for the special effects. It becomes even worse when the special effects stink. In some scenes the stupid snake looks so bad that you would think that they had a bunch of 5 year olds with a pack of crayons doing the animation. OK, maybe it's not that bad, but you get the point. When they base a movie around special effects it would be nice if they actually had spent money on the special effects. Or better yet, if they had hired people who knew how to create them properly. Anaconda is campy -- not a bad thing had the snake made up for the camp. The only reason I can really recommend this film would be for the fact that Jennifer Lopez is hot and sweaty throughout. For my money, that's worth the price of admission any day of the week. But other than Ms. Lopez's perspiration, there is really nothing else that warrants an exuberant recommendation for this movie. 6/10

¶ 5/22/1998 06:39:00 PM

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