This stirring picture concerns about a documentary film crew from National Geographic constituted by a motley group: Jennifer Lopez Ice Cube, Eric Stolz, Jonathan Hyde, Owen Wilson, Kari Wuhrer traveling the Amazon river looking for a legendary Indian tribe and guided by Jon Voigh, playing a nutty, snake-obsessed hunter.But a great creature terrorizing the river, it turns to be a very large Anaconda with more 50-foot long. Meanwhile the bunch relationship each other till appearance the enormous snake. A poisonous and giant snake,attack at random and slither down the river, forest, jungle and slither around the boat ready to attack anyone on its path.

The picture provides stirring and exciting amusement with hair-raising chills and creepy scares. The Anacandas, themselves , of course, are the real star stars and they are astounding terrifyingly and almost totally convincing.The snakes are made by animatronics and computer generator, as usual. Middling performances though the players reacting appropriately to becoming snake food. Rather sympathetic and exaggerated acting by Jon Voight as crazy and nasty snakes hunter. The picture displays atmospheric music score by Randy Edelman and colorful cinematography by Bill Butler, cameraman of ¨Jaws¨film. The movie is professionally directed by Luis Llosa, an expert action movies director (The sniper, The specialist) and habitual shooting on river Amazonas(Fire on the Amazon, eight hundred leagues down the Amazon). It's followed by inferior sequel : The hunt for the blood orchid(2004) by Dwight H. Little and created an authentic exploitation snakes sub-genre, such as : ¨Python I and II, Boa, Rattler, King Cobra , among others.

And let's be clear: the movie isn't serious! Take the performance of Jon Voight, who some have compared to different characters portrayed by different other actors, one of them being a Robert De Niro role. One thing everyone agrees on though is that he plays it over the top - as over the top as is possible and maybe even further out there. It fits the whole sentiment of the movie.

Then you have some actors that were not as known back then but at least ring a bell now. Now you could blame this movie to have spawned and birthed a lot of bad imitators (even some sequels that are seen as gross and just plain bad by some). But this put a lot of effort in what it did. Not that it all translates well on screen. The CGI effects look weak to say the least, but not worse than the ones used in part 3&4 which were made over a decade later! The model effects (it is not just CGI as some reviewers would like you to believe here) are quite decent, but as the making of reveals, could have worked better if different animatronics would have been used.

Having said all that, the movie deserves to be just seen as entertainment. Try to enjoy it for what it is. Call it guilty pleasure if it helps - just roll, ride - heck swim with it! It's a freaking Anaconda eating people for crying out loud - what do you expect? It's as good as it gets

That said, Anaconda is not bad enough to be one of the worst movies ever made. The tropical scenery is splendid, the snakes are impressive and the premise while daft was at least interesting. However, if I were to coin the phrase "absolute poppycock" I would give it to Anaconda. The story was interesting in its concept but it is very predictable with some unbearably silly scenes. Anaconda is also quite poorly paced, sometimes it drags, sometimes it feels rushed. The script is very cheesy and clumsy, and the characters are shallow. The direction is rather murky, and the acting is pretty dire. Jennifer Lopez is very bland in her role here, while Jon Voight is annoying and just awful with a very poorly written character, complete with a horrendous accent(not quite Superbabies:Baby Geniuses 2 horrendous, but still it was dreadful). So overall, it is not good. 3/10 Bethany Cox