Three movie stars who have been funny in their pre-dad-bod past and Thandiwe Newton — who’s rarely been called to land laughs — shipped off to Australia to make an action comedy about a supersized snake in the Amazon, a “reboot” or “more of a spiritual sequel” to the 1997 hit “Anaconda.”

The results are even worse than you feared. The bloated, over-budgeted 1997 B-movie “Anaconda’s” semi-intentional laughs turn out to be pretty hard to mimic in this latest remake/sequel/whatever you want to call it.

The gimmick here is that four lifelong friends from Buffalo hit walls in their personal and professional lives and try to take a shot at making “that ‘Anaconda’ reboot” they dreamed of filming as kids before that AARP membership card arrives in the mail.

Doug (Jack Black) never left town. Married (former teen star Ione Skye plays his wife) witha son, he’s working for a local company that shoots and edits wedding videos, shoveling another load of dirt onto his dreams with every themed wedding “film” he makes.

His boss’s reassurances that he’s managed “a B, maybe even a B+ life” in the process is cold comfort.

Doug had to fire his cameraman of choice Kenny (Steve Zahn) for getting blitzed on the job one too many times. At least Kenny’s on the wagon, or you know, “Buffalo sober” these days.

Actor pal Griff (Paul Rudd) made it to LA, but he can’t even keep a role with a single-line of dialogue these days.

And Claire (Newton), who acted in their childhood movies, moved away and married and is newly divorced.

Everybody flying in or just showing up at Doug’s surprise birthday party gets them thinking about “Anaconda” again. When Griff says he’s got the rights to the “Japanese novel” the first film was based on, Doug scripts and budgets a movie they can make in the actual Amazon with a real live “stunt” snake.

There’s a Brazilian woman (Daniela Melchior) on the lam from armed goons in the illegal-gold-fields of Amazonia who might provide the team with a “theme” for their action script. There’s a riverboat to rent and a wrangler (Selton Mello) with a “tame” anaconda ready for its closeup.

Let’s head up river and shoot this thing! What could go wrong?

Nothing funny, it turns out.

Sony spent stupid money on a movie whose only hopes of working would have been to make it look cheap and DIY, shot-on-the-fly with cellphone cameras and the like.

The gigantic digital snake looks like a CGI serpent, the only gags that might have landed a laugh turned up in the trailers months ago and nobody on set — on-camera or behind it (Tom Gormican directed “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” and the utterly gassed “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F”) — could wring anything amusing out of all this money.

Whatever braintrust brainstormed this debacle into being, any audience this picture pulls in arrives under false pretenses and any money it makes should be spent on “Let’s never make another one of these” posters papering the Sony lot.

Rating: PG-13, violence, drug abuse, profanity

Cast: Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Thandiwe Newton, Daniela Melchior, Ione Skye and Steve Zahn

Credits: Directed by Tom Gormican, scripted by Tom Gormican and Kevin Etten, based on the 1997 movie “Anaconda.” A Sony Columbia release.

Running time: 1:39