Anacondas: The Hunt for the
Blood Orchid

Is it wrong that I was rooting for the snake?  With this bunch of egotistical whiners as its prey, I don't think I can be faulted for wanting to see them meet their maker.  In this poor sequel to Anaconda, six people working for a powerful New York-based pharmaceutical company hire a boat captain and his assistant to take them to the Blood Orchid, found growing in the jungles of Borneo.  The flower blooms for two weeks every seven years and the team thinks the orchid holds the key to the "pharmaceutical fountain of youth".  The team encounters the Anacondas in the jungle, who have grown to huge sizes thanks to living longer from eating the orchids.  It's mating season and all the male Anacondas are searching for the lone female Anaconda (lucky snake), and when they find her, there will be "one big mating ball".  Yes, they said one big mating ball...

  I try to find something redeeming in every movie I watch.  Unfortunately, the best thing about this movie was the hot dog I ate during the previews.

The plot was ridiculous.  A powerful pharmaceutical company that thinks it has found the key to stopping the aging process would swarm Borneo with helicopters and security.  This company sends, by boat, a rag-tag team of people who think the jungle is a Bloomingdale's store the week of Christmas.  As the team tries to make their way to the orchids all the trouble and hindrances they encounter are so typical that there is no suspense built.  There is also no character development and what little personality the actors show makes you wish they would just get gobbled up faster.

The lines in the movie that these "actors" were forced to say were trite and tried too hard for a pop culture flare.  At one point when someone is complaining about the jungle another person says, "I'm voting you off this island," in reference to Survivor: Borneo.

The acting of Johnny Messner as boat captain Bill Johnson can only be compared to the acting of a cardboard cutout.  His character is supposed to be a tough, stoic, macho guy, but a little expressiveness, both physically and vocally, would have helped make him less of a one-dimensional character.  At one point in the movie I think he tried to smile, but I wasn't quite sure.  I asked my friend if she saw it too, but she said she thought he was just trying to fart.  All his lines were spoken in the same monotone delivery.  My favorite was when he said of his boat, "She may be ugly, but she puts out." How nice.

That's better than poor Kadee Strickland, who played Sam Rogers, a researcher.  She is supposed to have a southern accent, but it comes and goes - really evident in one scene, not there at all in another.  Strickland was raised in Georgia, so she must have some sort of an accent, I just don't know what happened to it.  Perhaps she went to the Kevin Costner School of Accents (if you don't understand this reference watch 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves).

Salli Richardson plays Gail Stern, a scientist and one of the head honchos of the pharmaceutical company.  Her acting in this movie is so bad people were laughing out loud when she delivered her lines.  It's not entirely her fault, as her character is wholly unredeemable.  I was rooting for the Anaconda to get her first.

I'm not sure if they had a casting director or if they just hired the first eight people who walked in the door.  They must have also saved money on the special effects, as I've seen better computer-generated snakes in video games.

Truly, the best thing about this movie is Johnson's little pet  monkey Kong (yes, even the monkey's name is not original).  He's a cutie who puts his little hands over his month and on top of his head when he's scared.  With the monkey being the best part of this movie, I'd suggest you skip it.

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