The Wildest Jennifer Lopez Movie Just Got Added To Streaming
Jennifer Lopez made a career out of being a singer, before moving into acting. The woman has taken on many roles, but her wildest movie is now available to stream.
When it comes to Jennifer Lopez’s lengthy career, the multi-hyphenate entertainer is known for pulling out all the stops to creatively achieve greatness. A singer and dancer that started out on In Living Color in the 1990s, Lopez moved into screen roles as an actor with a powerful performance and Golden Globe nomination in Selena, portraying the ill-fated singer in a biographical film about her life. Many significant projects have come Lopez’s way since Selena, including big-budgeted movies like Maid in Manhattan, Out of Sight, and Hustlers. Her status as a celebrity in the limelight and her personal life has become a sort of trademark for Lopez, but it’s one of her earliest movie roles that got her a lot of attention in the 1990s.
According to Decider, the Jennifer Lopez-led movie, Anaconda, is now available for streaming on Hulu. The flick was a step in the right direction for Lopez, who was known primarily for her singing and dancing resume prior to Anaconda’s release. Debuting in theaters in 1997, the movie was helmed by Peruvian director Luis Llosa as a follow-up to his memorable thriller The Specialist, starring Sharon Stone and Sylvester Stallone. Anaconda was billed as a horror movie set in the Amazon rainforest and preyed on audiences’ fears of snakes. Much like the 1990 film Arachnophobia, Anaconda dealt with themes of phobia mixed with exotic locations, wide distribution, and a stellar cast.
Anaconda starred Jennifer Lopez in one of her earliest leading roles, playing a character named Terri Flores that found herself getting down and dirty in the trenches of the rainforest, a direct opposite of the romantic comedies the actor found herself in later in her career. Costarring with Lopez were rapper Ice Cube, Academy Award-winning actor Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, Owen Wilson, and Danny Trejo. Lopez and Owen Wilson went on to star in a different kind of movie, Marry Me, that was released earlier this year. Between first starring together in 1997 and when Marry Me was released, Anaconda has enjoyed a cult classic following. The movie spawned several low-budget sequels, although Lopez and the A-list cast did not appear in many of them.
For Jennifer Lopez, the success of Anaconda meant attempting a film career that would showcase her talents beyond pop dance singles. The movie went on to gross over $136 million against a budget of $45 million, signifying a significant return for a film with an ensemble cast. Unfortunately for Lopez at the time, critics and audiences were not kind to the film upon its release. Rotten Tomatoes currently ranks Anaconda with 40% on its Tomatometer based on 53 critics’ reviews, as well as an Audience Score of 24% from over 250,000 ratings from viewers. Similarly, Metacritic ranks the movie with an unfavorable Metascore of 37. However, the User Score is slightly better at 6.8, which typically denotes that users of the site generally favor the film.
Critics and audiences displeased with Anaconda resulted in less than favorable outcomes when it came to awards season. Jon Voight earned a nomination for Worst Actor at the Golden Raspberry Awards, and the film’s director, screenwriters, and producers all earned nominations that year for Razzies. Each escaped without “winning” a Razzie award, while Jennifer Lopez didn’t earn a nomination at all for Anaconda. This was telling of an audience willing to forgive the actor for her performance in a film that ended up with a sizable box office draw. However, she would later earn nominations at the Razzies for other movies like Gigli and What to Expect When You’re Expecting, among others.
Since the release of Anaconda, Jennifer Lopez has had a rollercoaster of a career in the spotlight, both because of her professional endeavors but also because of her personal relationships. Having been married four times now, Lopez is well-known for her current relationship with actor Ben Affleck, who she costarred with in the critically panned Gigli and Kevin Smith’s Jersey Girl. After being engaged in the early 2000s and obtaining the well-publicized moniker of “Bennifer,” the couple ended up breaking up before getting together again close to 20 years later. Affleck and Lopez married in 2022, 25 years after the debut of Anaconda.
