Jack Black & Paul Rudd’s Meta Reboot Of 1997 Horror Cult Classic Debuts With Underwhelming Rotten Tomatoes Score

The first reviews for Jack Black and Paul Rudd’s Anaconda are in, and the Rotten Tomatoes score is a shocker. The meta reboot follows four friends who want to remake the 1997 movie, starring Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube. In their attempts to film the cult classic, their travels turn into a fight for survival when they encounter an actual anaconda.

Although the original Anaconda movie received mixed to poor reviews, it became a box office hit with $136.8 million. The survival horror eventually turned into a cult classic and spawned four sequels and now a meta reboot.

Despite the intriguing meta concept, Black and Rudd’s Anaconda is seemingly less impressive than its own original counterpart. With just 41 reviews tabulated so far, the upcoming reboot has debuted with a 37% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is two points lower than the original 1997 movie (39%).

Reactions are mixed about the new Anaconda installment, ranging from the reboot being funny enough to honor the 1997 original to the jokes falling flat and the story being uneven. Nevertheless, the consensus seems to be that the reboot has an intriguing concept, but director Tom Gormican fails to execute it thoroughly or sharply.

In ScreenRant’s review of AnacondaGregory Nussen gave the movie a generous 4 out of 10 stars, saying: “Funny and surprisingly sweet yet ultimately as boneless as a snake, Anaconda aims to be Bowfinger for a new generation but ends up feeling as insipid as the film it is loosely based on.” Despite the insurmountable flaws, they still saw the bright side to the reboot, as a film about friends making a movie, and that should be enough for an entertaining flick.

While it’s not the lowest-rated installment in the franchise, it still comes as a surprise given the movie’s meta and purposeful comedic nature. Although the original 1997 installment received similar amounts of negative reviews, the horror’s campiness was one of the movie’s biggest appeals, in the sense that the movie is “so-bad, it’s good,” making it a worthy B-movie flick.

Alongside Black and Rudd, the Anaconda cast includes Thandiwe Newton and Steve Zahn, while Cube makes his franchise return as a new character. Gormican wrote the script with Kevin Etten.

Anaconda will release in theaters on December 24, 2025

Release Date

December 24, 2025

Runtime

99 minutes

Director

Tom Gormican