Donzerly Light: Anaconda

Do you remember that time someone asked Mariah Carey about Jennifer Lopez and Mariah Carey responded with, “I don’t know her”? All due respect to Ms. Lopez, but that is some top tier shade right there. In a move very out of character for me, I will not follow Mariah Carey’s lead and I will admit that I do know Jennifer Lopez. I don’t know her personally, but I’m familiar with her career and I would like to spend the next few minutes discussing one of the films from said career.

The year was 1997. Jennifer Lopez’s run on In Living Color had wrapped up. She’d appeared in a handful of movies, including Money Train and Selena. But then in April of 1997, Anaconda was released and I think it might be my favorite Jennifer Lopez movie. It’s not my favorite because it’s a good movie (it’s not a good movie). It’s not my favorite because she delivers a stellar performance (she does not deliver a stellar performance). It’s my favorite Jennifer Lopez movie because it’s very dumb and has bad special effects, but it’s also very funny. I don’t think the filmmakers meant for it to be funny, but a gift is a gift.

The plot of the movie isn’t complicated, which is one of the many things working in its favor. Jennifer Lopez is part of a National Geographic documentary film crew that is exploring the Brazilian rainforest, looking for an elusive tribe of people that live there (maybe they live there because they don’t want to be found, Jennifer Lopez). Shortly after the film crew begins their journey, they encounter Paul, played by noted skeezeball Jon Voight, who is stranded (or so he says) and they take him onboard their boat. They eventually find out that they’ve been setup and that Paul is really a snake hunter and he’s looking for the legendary anaconda – the biggest snake in all of the rainforest. If I had a nickel…

I don’t want to spoil the movie if you haven’t seen it, but I will tell you that it is disappointingly free from any trouser snake jokes. I would have expected at least three, but there isn’t even one. What the movie does have is Ice Cube and a young Owen Wilson in supporting roles. In 2022 Jennifer Lopez appeared with Owen Wilson in another movie, Marry Me. That’s the movie that motivated me to buy an ad-free subscription to the Peacock streaming service because I got so sick of having to watch commercials for Marry Me when I was trying to watch episodes of the Real Housewives. I bet that was Peacock’s plan all along. I don’t know anyone who has seen Marry Me, so who knows if it’s even a real movie.

Back to Anaconda. If you’re pressed for time, you could probably skip the first half of the movie. The only thing you see the snake kill in the first half of the movie is a panther, which is OK, but that’s all. The snake did squeeze the panther so hard that the panther’s eye popped out, which was a nice touch, but it’s still not as good as seeing it eat the actor listed eighth in the credits.

Maybe the most interesting thing about the 1997 film Anaconda is the fact that they’ve (kind of) remade it for 2025. You’ve probably seen the trailer by now, but for those who haven’t, the 2025 version stars Paul Rudd and Jack Black and in the movie, they decide to remake Anaconda and then when they’re making the movie, a real snake in the jungle starts pursuing them. It’s the Tropic Thunder of snake movies, which is something we desperately need right now.

In honor of the new Anaconda, I’d like to share with you my list of things from the original version of the film that probably won’t make it into the remake. But it would be kind of cool if they did because if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. But if they do insist on fixing it, I hope they do it with better CGI.

• Jon Voight’s accent: Whenever Jon Voight’s character speaks, it sounds like the director told him to “sound like someone who lives near the equator.” It’s not really specific to one country or region, but that’s about as close as you can get to determining where this person grew up. I wonder if he’s from the same place where Alec Baldwin’s wife is from, aka Connecticut. She sometimes has an accent, so maybe they went to high school together. The accent is distracting, even more so when it’s coming out of Jon Voight’s very Caucasian face. Maybe this where they got the idea for Jar Jar Binks accent in The Phantom Menace.

  
  

• The first half of the movie: I mentioned earlier that not much happens in the first half of the movie, but there are a couple of things worth bringing up. First, Owen Wilson’s character starts smoking a cigarette for some reason. I mean, I guess people smoked in the 90s, but here it just kind of popped up out of the blue for no reason. It made about as much sense as if he’d sat down and pulled out some Legos or starting trimming his toenails. Also, at one point, Jon Voight’s character finds a pile of powder and tells everyone that it’s the powder of human bones. Sure, Jan.

  
  

• Noisy snakes: I’ll admit, I’ve never been killed by a snake. But if I had, I don’t think it would be as noisy as the snakes in this movie. I understand that, as a viewer, I would also think it was weird if it was completely silent when the snake was killing people. But this movie makes it sound like it’s noisier than someone beating the shit out of a pinata at a child’s birthday party while the party guests cheer them on. If one of these snakes were going to kill you in a city they’d have to get a permit so they wouldn’t get ticketed for breaking a noise ordinance. And that makes me wonder if, when a snake goes in to get a noise permit because they’re going to kill someone, does the person working at the noise permit desk have to report that to animal control? Like, are they a mandatory reporter for pending snake murder?

  
  

• Jon Voight’s thighs: Yes, I understand that you don’t want to hear about Jon Voight’s thighs. I can assure you, I don’t really want to talk about them, but there’s no way we can get out of this without me mentioning them. At one point in the film, after the documentary crew has realized that the snake hunter is bad news, they tie him up on the boat. Most of the film crew goes off into the jungle to look for fuel for the boat (or something like that) and he’s left alone with one girl who showed part of her boob earlier so you know she’s not going to make it to the end credits. Anyway, Jon Voight tricks her into coming too close to him and then he uses his thighs and squeezes her head/neck area and kills her. For him, I think it was a tribute to the anaconda he’s hunting because they squeeze people to death too. I thought it had a real “pick me” vibe that seemed kind of desperate. Just be yourself Jon Voight! If that’s not good enough for the snake, then it was never meant to be.

  
  

• That ending: By the end of the movie, Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube and Jon Voight are in some sort of abandoned jungle factory building and Jon Voight is using the other two as bait to try and capture an even bigger snake because Jennifer Lopez went and killed the other snake that Jon Voight was chasing after. As you might expect, the bigger snake shows up and eats Jon Voight, which is all fine and good, but you know how it is when giant snakes eat people – they have to make a big production out of it. So after the snake eats Jon Voight, the snake regurgitates him right in front of Jennifer Lopez and the corpse of Jon Voight winks at Jennifer Lopez before collapsing. This is a weird time to have a diva-off, but OK. Then Ice Cube sets the snake on fire, but the snake continues to chase Jennifer Lopez. I think it’s because snakes are cold blooded? Probably not, but if I was the snake and someone set me on fire, I think I’d address that before I tried to eat Jennifer Lopez. This must be where the saying “hindsight is 20/20” came from.

Takeaway Quote of the Week

“Is it just me or does the jungle make you really, really horny?”

 -Gary (Owen Wilson) who already knows the answer to that question but is trying to live up to his reputation as the boat perv.

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Heath Smith is co-host of Fuzzy Memories, the podcast that celebrates the good, the rad and the fugly of the 80s and 90s. He was once asked by a cast member of MTV’s Road Rules if he was from Puerto Rico. In his free time, he enjoys Mariah Carey a normal and healthy amount. For a good time, follow him on Instagram.

Why "Donzerly Light"? Heath says: In elementary school, I thought "donzerly light" was part of the lyrics of the national anthem. I didn't realize that the actual words were "dawn's early light." I just assumed "donzerly" was an old-timey word that meant "majestic" or something like that. My middle school social studies teacher, who thought I was trying to make a joke with “donzerly,” would be 100% irritated by naming my column this way, and that makes it even better.