Jack Black's 2025 Box Office Hit Based On A Horror Classic Is Streaming On Netflix

Meta genre movies featuring stars playing themselves are all the rage nowadays. Of late, we've been treated to Nicolas Cage starring as Nicolas Cage in the action-comedy "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" and Keanu Reeves popping by for a small part as a celebrity boyfriend in the rom-com "Always Be My Maybe." Next year, we'll get another major action star goofing on his tough guy persona in "Jason Statham Stole My Bike." (Yes, that's going to be a real movie.)

To its credit, Sony's 2025 reboot of "Anaconda" worked a semi-clever twist on this approach. It's a comedic horror film in which Jack Black and Paul Rudd play, respectively, a down-on-his-luck wedding videographer and a struggling actor, who get the hare-brained idea of mounting a low-budget remake of one of their favorite movies, "Anaconda," in the Amazon Rainforest. They soon encounter a Sony crew making a legit studio remake of the film, and, most disconcertingly, a very real and quite giant killer anaconda.

Directed by Tom Gormican (who co-wrote the screenplay with his "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent" partner Kevin Etten), the film's impressive supporting cast includes Thandiwe Newton, Steve Zahn, Daniele Melchior, and Ione Skye. (There's one cameo I'll refrain from spoiling.) But despite this collection of, well, massive talent, the movie received mixed reviews. /Film's Ethan Anderton gave it a decent 7 out of 10 rating, so if this kind of goofball material is up your alley, it's worth a look — especially since it's now streaming on Netflix.

The best way to watch the 2025 version of "Anaconda" is to pair it with Luis Llosa's cheekily exciting 1997 original. Definitely watch Llosa's take first, which features a screenplay credited to the "Top Gun" team of Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr., as well as Hans Bauer (who also wrote the novel, "Anaconda: The Writer's Cut") and a deliciously demented villain performance from Jon Voight (his final scene is a howl). It's a B movie that comfortably zips down its exploitation lane. Again, if you like this kind of stuff (and who doesn't love an unabashedly cheeky monster movie?), you are going to have a blast.

As for the new "Anaconda," the meta movie craze is going to wear out its welcome fast (if it hasn't already). My worry is that it could make masterpieces like "Being John Malkovich" and "Wings of Desire" (where the great Peter Falk plays himself) feel less strange and wonderful to people checking them out for the first time. There's no right way to make a meta movie (or play around with meta elements), but meta concepts should be used sparingly. Go overboard, and you'll wind up with dozens of gag-a-second spoof movies chasing that "Airplane!" magic. Then again, "Airplane!" has been around for 46 years and it's every bit as funny now as it was then, so maybe there's nothing to worry about at all.