uby, Calif., is a quiet little town full of people leading quiet little lives. There's John Cooper (Rosenoff), back in town from a stint on the professional mountain-biking tour to work in his family's struggling electroplating factory. There's John's girlfriend, Kristin (Barron), and his buddy, punk-rock real-estate agent Tommy (Wheaton). Then there's deputy sheriff Greg (Zabka), John's former friend and bitter rival for Kristin's affections. The rest of the town is full of the usual characters: the sheriff and his other, bumbling deputy; the town coroner; a pair of lesbian campers; Tommy's over-the-top real-estate broker boss; John's overstressed brother and two brain-damaged employees; and so on.
It's not a bad place, but it needs a little livening up. What Ruby really needs is a huge honking snake to show up and start indiscriminately eating people, if only to cut the cast down to more manageable size. When a top-secret government plane crashes in the hills outside town, that's just what it gets.
When a giant, acid-spitting snake rolls into town, mad scientists and government agents can't be far behind. Sure enough, along comes Dr. Anton Rudolph (Englund), complete with white linen suit, matching hat and a baby python he keeps in his pocket. Rudolph is consulting herpetologist to NSA Agent Bart Parker (Van Dien), who's brought along an "elite cadre" of special-forces types to deal with the situation. Rudolph wants to capture the snake for the sake of science. Parker wants to blow it to bits before anyone else gets killed. The snake has its own plans.
When Parker's full-out military assault ends in predictable disaster, John and his friends are left to save themselves and the rest of the town. It promises to be an explosive battle royale against 129 feet of sheer computer-animated mayhem.
Behold the power of cheese
At the end of the DVD's commentary track, director Clabaugh says it outright: "I certainly recognize--I think we all do--that we have not achieved a work of art here." Python's a B movie, and that's all it ever wanted to be. Thus, it walks a fine line between slyly witty and plain cheesy.
Van Dien's well on the cheesy side. With his bizarre accent, haircut and mustache, he comes off like a 1930s Hollywood rendition of a Spanish gigolo. Englund is grand fun, though, spewing two-dollar words as if he thinks they're five-dollar words. Rosenoff, in his film debut, makes a likable hero who's easy to root for. And how can you miss Jenny McCarthy getting her head cut off in a cameo, or Wil Wheaton with purple hair and a nipple ring?
Of course the real star is the snake, supposedly a "genetic chimera" of several species. It certainly isn't a python. It has fangs, spits acid and uses its tail like a samurai sword. The one thing it doesn't do is constrict anything. It's equally unbelievable visually. It changes size based on the available room, lighting shifts when it's onscreen, and it never seems to have any real mass. This isn't exactly Jurassic Park.
Despite its faults, though, Python isn't without charm. Most of the characters are fun, and even the minor ones get some good moments. The filmmakers' commentary track helps a lot. These guys slam the movie more effectively than anyone else could because they know exactly how shooting it in 18 days on a shoestring budget forced them to make do with whatever they could get. They mock Van Dien's accent, bicker over whether they should have used the CGI or rubber snake in one scene, and explain why so many things just don't make sense. If nothing else, they make Python an interesting lesson in how the direct-to-video fringe of the movie business really works.
Python is far from the worst thing I've ever seen, although that may say more about me than about the movie. Overall, as long as viewers go into it with the right frame of mind, watching Python can be an enjoyable experience.
