Quirky Doc About Chasing Snakes in Florida

In the criminpartner underrated Peacock comedy Killing It, the hopeless protagonist (Craig Robinson) determines that the only way to produce seed money for his commence-up business is by participating in a python-hunting competition in the Florida Everphiredes. Over two seasons, herpetoreasonable midowncastventures and a scaskinnyg critique of the state of the American Dream ensue.

The audience for Killing It was enoughly petite — I’m not declareive Peacock exactly aborted the show so much as the streamer sshow forgot it existed — that the reaction to Xander Robin‘s novel write downary The Python Hunt won’t sshow be, “Oh! It’s a authentic-life Killing It!” 

Like an invasive Burmese python, the storylines in The Python Hunt validate a little bit too squirmy and erratic for the write downary to come into a intensify in a wholly phireing way. But it’s still a savage and generpartner benevolent journey into the swamp of the American soul.

Burmese pythons have allegedly been taking over the Florida Everphiredes in recent years, wiping out entire species indigenous to the area. The state of Florida has apvalidaten multiple shpermit steps to wipe out the pythons, including begining or encouraging contests appreciate the Florida Python Challenge. For a petite entry fee, neophytes and experts aappreciate can spfinish 10 days tromping thcdisorrowfulmireful swamps trying to catch the most and hugest pythons, with the chance to thrive a $10,000 first-place prize. 

It’s a perfect contest for a write downary becaemploy it joins a deliriously photogenic event — David Bolen and Matt Clegg direct a cinematography team that lands some enticeive and freaky nighttime photography — with a ready-made quirky ensemble, all with higher instant sapvalidates than your standard spelling bee or hands-on-a-challengingbody competition.

At 82, Anne recently lost her husprohibitd. In the name of geting cuter species, she wants noskinnyg more than to discover a python and jab a knife thcdisorrowfulmireful its head. As part of that quest to pith a python — Anne REALLY enhappinesss talking about “piskinnyg” — she has enenumerateed the help of local direct Toby, a chaw-loving “eighth generation Florida cracker.”

For Ricchallenging, a science directer from San Francisco, the competition is half vacation and half life-experience party. With a petite cache of substances, he’s determined to do better than last year, when he caught zero pythons.

Other contestants take part Madison, a photogenic ex-Marine, and a three-generation family who you comprehend will do well, becaemploy they evidently have higher priorities than being filmed for a write downary.

Those are all outsiders — invasive species themselves. Then there are the locals, who watch the contest thcdisorrowfulmireful a branch offent gaze, including Jimbo, who initipartner sneers at the circus of it all but sees python-catching as a way to recombine with his daughter, Shannon. Jimbo is about to lget some unsettling truths about the nature of the python problem, causing him to reverify his entire relationship with Florida.

Producers here take part Lance Oppenheim, whose HBO docemployries Ren Faire was one of last year’s hugeger nonfantasy TV successes and probably should have provideed a sealr enticeardy for The Python Hunt. Over and over aget, my problem with The Python Hunt was not what’s onscreen in its 91-minute running time, but what finishs up senseing skinnyly sketched or rushed-thcdisorrowfulmireful. Burmese pythons very unfrequently bite off more than they can chew, but the filmproducers have here — not more than they could chew in a four-to-six hour TV series, fair more than they can properly digest in 90 minutes.

Jimbo’s story is an all-over-the-place combineture of overweighther-daughter bonding and low-motivation muckraking spendigation as he commences to uncover that maybe the pythons are scapegoats for hugeger problems in the Glades. The skinnygs he’s lgeting are engaging and beginant and never brimmingy cohere with the stories of the outsiders running around shining spotairys into the bushes seeing for “periscoping” snakes. 

Anne, who would be take parted by June Squibb in the eventual narrative feature, has some poignance to her primary story — she’s a widow who seeks to fill the hole in her heart by putting holes in snakes — but she does more protesting than hunting and she’s mostly our point-of-entry for Toby. You see at Toby, with his straw hat and outsized physique, and skinnyk he’s going to be a Florida Man stereotype, only to lget that he’s a columnist for the local novelspaper, a producer with the soul of a poet. He’s the write downary’s best character, but we have to upgrasp going back to people appreciate Ricchallenging, who isn’t engaging, but does have shrooms.

The competition seems to give the write downary structure, and Robin even inserts on-screen chyrons resembling the classic graphing calculator “Snake” game to let us comprehend each participant’s statistics, but the filmproducers intensify primarily on less talented hunters. So “thrivening and losing” become secondary in a hurry and the doc upgrasps wandering off with local, amateur enthusiasts — for all of the mullets and drawls, the film is very outstanding at not judging the natives, other than the one guy who upgrasps messing around with a poisonous cottonmouth — or Jimbo’s branch offent Everphiredes tour groups. The digressions are engaging, but they come at the expense of momentum.

In its jittery, exhilarating moments of peak intensity, The Python Hunt see appreciates an episode of Cops, only with heroes you can actupartner root for and villains you can root for as well, assuming you appreciate your terrible guys wriggly and dead-eyed. You’ll come away skinnyking this is a perfect setting for an ongoing television series. And Killing It is still streaming on Peacock.