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Python (2000)
Directed by Richard Clabaugh
Written by Chris Neal, Garrison Hershberger, from a story by Phillip Roth, yes three writers, and nary a plot in sight
Stars: Frayne Rosanoff, Robert Englund, William Zabka, Dana Barron, Sara Mornell, Wil Wheaton, Chris Owens
Genre: Horror / Giant Snakes / Slithering Serpents
Content: violence, gore, sex and audience abuse

Python
You'd think a snake the size of a city bus would be more memorable

I'm always amazed when a filmmaker has nothing to say.

Putting together the funding, gathering actors, writing a script, working out distribution, securing locations, working out catering, and dealing with last minute emergencies are such an enormous pain in the ass that I guess I always assume that for someone to put themselves through all that hassle, it must be because they have something they want to say.

But some people, apparently, just do it because they enjoy all the hassle, and what the hell, it's a living.

Such is Python. I can't think what the makers had in mind other than selling their little snake film to someone and making a few bucks. If they can get someone to buy it and they can make an honest living at it, meaning they pay all their bills and honor all their contracts, I guess it's as good a way to make a living as any other. I just don't understand it, is all I'm saying.

The sins of Python are many, but primary among them is that it can't decide at the beginning whether it wants to be a giant snake movie or a spoof of giant snake movies. It introduces the serious element of a giant snake on the loose, but also introduces comedic elements that are jaw dropping in their awfulness. I'm referring specifically to a sheriff's deputy so stupid that there's no way he passed any kind of admission test. He should be at a job that has him sorting big screws from little screws, or something like that. Soon after this, we get a broadly played scene between Jenny McCarthy and a real estate salesman; the scene is not even a little funny, adds ten minutes to the film's run time, and could be cut out in its entirety without the slightest loss to the narrative. And what was it doing in the film in the first place? It just so obviously doesn't belong in the film.

The film attains a more uniform tone as it goes along, as the "comedic relief" elements are gradually fed to the snake, but really the damage is done and the film never recovers. The film is an ungainly mishmash of disparate elements. There is the "teenagers in love" angle — barely explored. There is the "crack team of commandos" subplot — barely explored. There is the "animosity between one of the kids and the smart deputy" subplot — explored a little then resolved in a throw-away scene. The result is a hodgepodge of confused fragments; there's no cohesive whole, no thematic unity, no apparent point. A series of non sequitur scenes intermixed with fake looking footage of a 60-foot snake that must weigh at least a ton, but moves as if it is feather-light. In spite of its size, there is no sense that it has any mass.

This is because the snake is computer generated, and it never looks like it's not CG. There is no evidence that the filmmakers did any pre-production planning for special effects. It's as if they simply framed shots with room to put a snake in during post production, then took bids from the cheapest effects house they could find.

This is not the best procedure to adopt. In a movie called Python, about a rampaging python, it is strange that the snake turns out to be just another of the film's fragmented elements.

I'm picking on Python especially because it is one of the many Giant Snake movies I watched during the Sci Fi Network's Memorial Day Marathon. Many of them seemed to be produced by the same film company, and the same names kept showing up on the producer and story by credits. It made me wonder how someone could make snake after snake movie without ever once seeming to do any research on snakes. I think the movies would be more interesting if the fact of their snakeness had something to do with the plot; I've watched snakes at the zoo; they don't move like the snakes in these movies. They move slowly and deliberately; they can move when they want to, but they don't chase along like a runaway freight train.

I have nothing against films in this genre, but most of them could be a lot better with only a little bit of effort, and this is one in particular that you could easily pass on.