Reel Advice from the Video Store Guy

Boa Vs. Python

DVD

*

Directed by

David Flores

Written by

Chase Parker

Sam Wells

Cast

David Hewlett

Jaime Bergman

Kirk B.R. Woller

Adam Kendrick

Angel Boris

Mariana Stanisheva

Hari Anichkin

Velizar Binev

Asen Blatechki

Ryan Spike Dauner

Jeff Rank

Hristo Shopov

Niki Sotirov

Nasko Srebrev

Jonas Talkington

R

90 mins

From the "Sweet Mercy Why Did They Feel The Need To Subject Us To This??" files comes Boa Vs. Python, a movie that'll make you change your mind about snakes, and probably from "Ew, I don't like snakes" to "I'm going to kill every snake I see from now on."

So what we've got here is the story of two terribly familiar, honking-big snakes. The Boa, from the Boa series of direct-to-video titles, and the Python, from the, obviously, Python series of direct-to-video titles. We can't get right into the snake combat, oh no! First we have to look literary and do some foreshadowing, so we have a couple masked wrestlers with the why-didn't-we-see-this-coming-sooner names of Boa and Python.

A wealthy businessman is importing an actual python while all the wrestling is going on so he can go on a hunt of his own later on. This is probably a bad idea, in retrospect, because as we all knew was going to happen, the python would get loose. It's somewhere under the midwest right now. So the government reacts to that in the truest government fashion: It looks at the situation and thinks, let's send the giant boa we have penned up underground, which we're milking for antivenom research, to kill the python!

Oh why oh WHY does this sound like so much of a bad idea that I want to scream my lungs out? Because it IS! The feds slap a bunch of electronic equipment into the boa and send it on its way to attack the python.

Meanwhile, the rich schmuck who picked up the python in the first place is off leading his own hunting party after it. Man, this is a surprisingly complex plot for the bringing together of two minor-league franchises. Sadly, even with all the unnecessary complexity, it's still really just a tired retread of the previous Boa and Python plotlines. Soldiers die, the big snakes brawl it out, and that's the day.

The biggest problem with Boa Vs. Python is that it doesn't actually set out to do anything NEW; it's the same old movie, recast and reshot, with the addition of another snake. The movie doesn't offer any measure of originality, no matter how insignificant, to sell itself to its viewer. Only the addition of another snake prevents it from being merely 'Boa 3' or 'Python 3.' It's hard to believe but it's true - the only thing separating us from total unoriginality is a second snake.

The ending is a little perky, a little chipper, a little inspirational, and wholly predictable, which sums up this entire movie, to be honest with you. From a throwaway sequence in the beginning revolving around how long our female lead can hold her breath (which ironically ends up becoming direly important in the end) to just a whole whopping chunk of more of the same as in the other 'giant killer snake' movies, Boa Vs. Python will make things clear that once you've seen ONE movie about giant killer snakes, you've seen them ALL.

The special features are limited to a handful of subtitles and several trailers for Boa Vs. Python, Anacondas: Hunt for the Blood Orchid, Boa, Kaena: The Prophecy, Resident Evil 2, and Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation. This is, I suppose, a blessing in disguise. Why would I want to see deleted scenes from a movie which I would rather desire to be over in the shortest possible order anyway? What director's commentary could sway my opinion on this pile of dreck in my DVD player?

If the DVD padded its special features menu, I'd have to actually give it some CREDIT, and I wouldn't want to go doing that at this stage of the game, would I?

All in all, Boa Vs. Python is just one more in the series, one more truly vapid and pointless brick in an already overpopulated wall.

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