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    weekend event planner

    Here are the top 12 things to do in Houston this Easter weekend

    Craig Lindsey
    Apr 1, 2021 | 6:00 am
    crawfish boil fest
    Get your Cajun on this Saturday.
    Photo by Getty Images

    This weekend will give us both the kooky April Fools' Day and the hallowed and joyous Easter Sunday. So, along with all the egg-hunting and prank-pulling that'll be going down these next few days, delight in these fun activities. Speaking of Easter fun, check out our handy Easter dining guide.

    Here, then, are your best bets for the weekend.

    Thursday, April 1

    Gospel at the George: An Easter Celebration with John-Mark McGaha and Piper Jones
    A.D. Players will present a gospel celebration featuring John-Mark McGaha and Piper Jones. Backed by a seven-piece band and a six-member, socially-distanced gospel choir, McGaha and Jones will perform such gospel hits as "Total Praise," "Jesus Will" and "Falling in Love with Jesus," as well as classic hymns like "Great is Thy Faithfulness," "Nothing but the Blood of Jesus" and "How Great Thou Art." This concert will be available to stream through Sunday, April 18. 7 pm.

    Improv Houston presents Michael Yo
    Actor, comedian, and self-proclaimed "half-black brother with a Korean mother" Michael Yo will be in town for a three-night stint at Improv Houston, as part of his We're Still Here Tour. He's been all over the place since he dropped his 2018 special Michael Yo: Blasian. He's been a regular on The Joe Rogan Experience and The Wendy Williams Show, as well as appearing on such sitcoms as Kevin Can Wait and Facebook Watch's Starter Pack. 8 pm (7:30 and 9:45 pm Friday; 7 and 9:30 pm Saturday).

    Two Headed Dog presents Movies on the Patio
    How about some outdoor movies to watch this April Fools' Day? If you're down with that, Midtown watering hole Two Headed Dog has a couple of particular selections you can watch. It starts with the 1997 Mira Sorvino-Lisa Kudrow comedy Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion. This will be followed by another high-school movie: the 1987 horror sequel Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II. There will also be door prizes, a Romy and Michelle look-alike contest and food from Knives in Water. 10 pm.

    Friday, April 2

    Harris County Cultural Arts Council presents Crowns
    For the next couple of weekends, Crowns showcases examples of the various headdresses worn by Black women, including African queens and those who wore the Tignon, across the diaspora down through the centuries. Intended as a tribute to Iola Moss (1914-2019), who believed the hat signified godly covering and was rarely seen on Sundays without one, Crowns celebrates the grace, beauty, strength, and resiliency of black women. It runs through Friday, April 16. 4 pm.

    Alley Theatre presents El Chuco Town Forever
    The Alley will be running this production written by Texas playwright Isaac Gómez (commissioned author of the upcoming What-a-Christmas! at the Alley). It's about Janie and Miguel, two long-time assistant managers at an El Paso big-box store, right by Juárez, Mexico. The memorial service is tonight. It didn’t happen at their store, but it could have. Should they go? Will they go? This will be available to stream through Sunday, July 4. 7:30 pm.

    Houston Symphony presents A Bach Easter
    On Friday and Saturday night, the Houston Symphony will celebrate the season with the exquisite music of Bach. This will include the Concerto for Oboe and Violin with Principal Oboe Jonathan Fischer and Concertmaster Yoonshin Song, two of Bach’s great sacred cantatas with vocalists Yulia Van Doren and Elizabeth DeShong, and the well-known Suite No. 2. Baroque specialist Jane Glover conducts the Easter-weekend program. The Saturday night performance is available to livestream from home. 8 pm.

    Saturday, April 3

    Easter Egg Hunt at Lone Star Flight Museum
    Little aviators can join their age group to hunt for Easter eggs around our aircraft. All eggs are filled with toys and/or candy. Keep an eye out for golden eggs filled with special prizes like a museum membership or a surprise gift from the gift shop. Museum visitors will also enjoy more than two dozen amazing aircraft, flight simulators, the Flight Academy exhibit, the Heritage Gallery, and the Texas Aviation Hall of Fame. 9 am.

    Barbie Pop-Up Truck at Baybrook Mall
    Barbie fans and '90s lovers will enjoy this outdoor mobile pop-up experience for just one day only. The hot-pink truck will sell exclusive, Barbie-themed, retro-inspired apparel and accessories like embroidered denim jackets, caps, T-shirts, iridescent vinyl "boombox" tote bags, iridescent vinyl fanny packs, "cassette tape" wallets, etc. There will also be a collectible, Barbie Polaroid camera in limited quantities. This is perfect for all those Barbie girls in this Barbie world. 10 am.

    Easter Weekend at Big Rivers Waterpark & Adventures
    The New Caney water haven will be open Easter weekend and will include a Peeps eating contest on Saturday and an Easter Egg Hunt on Sunday. Admission this weekend is a discounted $14.99 per person and includes, in addition to the Easter activities, floating waterpark Wild Isle, the Boca Chica Bay Wave Pool, axe-throwing, archery, a cougar climb, a forest maze, a petting zoo, and alligator encounters. Zip lines and ropes courses are also available for an additional fee. 11 am.

    The 2nd Annual Cajun AF Festival
    Let's keep crawfish season going this weekend with this throwdown, happening at the Live Oak Lounge & Grill. For $100, you can get all-you-can eat crawfish, shrimp, and blue crabs. For $75, you can get all-you-can-eat crawfish and shrimp. For $40, there's the crawfish and, for $20, you can just get in and wander around. If you're the kind of person who loves to sit with a big pile of crawfish and just go to town all day, you can't go wrong with this. (It's free with RSVP until 3 pm.) Noon.

    Sunday, April 4

    The Woodlands Cars & Coffee for a Cause
    Presented by Woodlands Performance & Suspension, the purpose behind this event is to provide a morning gathering to show off special vehicles, be a supportive partner with Market Street & the local community, share information about needful, non-profit organizations in Montgomery County, and to give back monetarily. Donations are welcome for the Market Street “Change for Charities” program, that benefits four new non-profit organizations in Montgomery County each year. 6:30 am.

    Boosie Badazz at Space Houston Nightclub
    It's going to get particularly ignant at Space Houston Nightclub this weekend. Because Boosie Badazz will be doing a set there this weekend. The Louisiana rapper is always being a dang fool on social media. You may have heard about him getting kicked off Instagram for paying some drunk dude at a convenience store $550 so Boosie could slap him for a music video. Believe it or not, that's the least ignant thing he's done on the Interwebs. He'll most likely get more ignant when he performs this weekend. 8 pm.

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    Movie Review

    Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

    Alex Bentley
    Dec 26, 2025 | 2:30 pm
    Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda
    Photo by Matt Grace
    Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

    In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

    The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

    Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

    Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

    The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

    It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

    Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

    Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

    ---

    Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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