Jack Black heads back to the jungle, dragging Paul Rudd with him.

2025’s Anaconda might lack the necessary bite to be the sly, self-aware dissection putting the squeeze on the very industry machinery that demanded its existence, but it’s never less than a pretty good time, as you’d expect from a movie which bets it all on casting two of Hollywood’s most likeable stars. The pivot away from the creature-feature sincerity of the 1997 original to explore the desperation of modern franchise management is fine, but the movie finds its heart by framing the gimmick around a group of middle-aged friends attempting to mount a belated, low-budget sequel to the favourite creature feature of their youth.

Doug McCallister (Jack Black), a wedding videographer who tries to infuse his “wedding films” with artistic credibility, feels like his life hasn’t turned out the way he hoped. At his surprise birthday party, his childhood friend Griff (Paul Rudd) returns from Los Angeles to gift him an old VCR with a video tape of “Squatch”, a film they made in their youth stuck in it. Griff, a struggling actor whose career high point has been a minor role on the show S.W.A.T., has another surprise: he has secured the film rights to the movie Anaconda and wants to get their old movie making gang back together to reboot it. Roping in their friends Claire (Thandiwe Newton) and Kenny (Steve Zahn) they set out to the Amazon jungle with a small budget and dig ambitions. But when their chartered boat is, unbeknownst to them, commandeered by Ana (Daniela Melchior) the four filmmaking friends – and snake handler Santiago (Selton Mello) – find themselves caught up in a cross-jungle pursuit by gun-toting gold smugglers.

As you’d expect from a cast containing Black, Rudd and Zahn, half the job is just to roll camera and let them play around with the script and all are on good form. Selton Mello is tremendous fun as the inscrutable and often incomprehensible local snake wrangler. With a small boat filled with big personalities, Thandiwe Newton finds herself stuck in a somewhat thankless role but still manages to have a few good moments, as does Melchior’s mysterious Ana.

Perhaps befitting a 90s throwback, there’s a retro feel to Anaconda, helped enormously by the supplementary plot involving gold smuggling in the Amazon, lending the meta-filmmaking schtick an old-fashioned air of a screwball caper. But while its credentials as a satire of the modern movie industry are adequate, as a love letter to those who grew up loving movies so much, they made their own with whatever equipment they could lay their hands on it hits a sweet spot that elevates it to something else. There are plenty of good gags, great performances and even one or two brilliant ideas, and it’s a fun old time at the flicks but the soul of Anaconda isn’t found in the crowd-pleasing cameos by Ice Cube or J-Lo but in the idea that if you and your friends used to borrow a camcorder and mount your own productions, it’s never too late to pick up that camera again.