Jungle Cruise is one of those movies which garner a favorable first impression, but seems to have several cracks in its facade when you pay closer attention. Then again, maybe that’s the point. It’s a theme park ride movie- almost a lesser version of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie mixed in with Raiders of the Lost Ark. And if you walk into the theater (or your living room/bedroom) with an open mind, you just might have a good time.
In 1916, adventurer and feminist Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) travels along with her brother, MacGregor (Jack Whitehall) to search the Amazon for the Tears of the Moon, magical flowers that can heal all diseases. Once they arrive in Brazil, they enlist the services of skipper Frank Wolf (Dwayne Johnson) to search for the Tears. Lily soon discovers that there’s more to Frank than he’s letting on. The trio also have to evade Prince Joachim, the heir to the German empire, who is also looking for the Tears, as well as a group of cursed Spanish conquistadors led by Don Aguirre (Edgar Ramirez) who cannot travel far from the river.
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (who’s also teaming up with Johnson on Black Adam), Jungle Cruise is clearly meant to evoke the spirit and derring-do of classic adventure films. However, the first half suffers from a lack of stakes. One of the reasons you root for Indiana Jones is that he comes so close to losing several times in a fight. The zaniness also never crosses onto the absurd in the way Pirates of the Caribbean did so deftly.
The chemistry between Johnson and Blunt is strange, in the sense that it’s more of a brother and sister bickering dynamic than a romantic one. Of course, Blunt does her best to sell Lily falling for Frank, but it feels almost one sided. The rest of the cast is solid, although there are cases of casting overqualified actors like Paul Giamatti for bit parts. Jesse Plemons plays a classic (read cheesy) villain who finds himself doing strange things, such as communicating with bees to find out Lily and Frank’s location.
The CGI, unfortunately, is sometimes noticeably bad, especially in the case of the jaguar, Proxima. The fights are paced effectively, where Collet-Serra manages to capture the tone of the aforementioned classic movies, which is a pleasant surprise when one considers the conveyor belt aesthetic you usually get with a Disney movie.
Jungle Cruise is paced just right, so that the action hijinks get balanced with the character moments. Aside from strange but pleasing choices such as scoring a flashback scene with a cover of Nothing Else Matters, it’s one of those entertaining films that you forget a few hours after watching it.
It’s weird, because in a way Jungle Cruise feels a step down from something like F9, which is even more ridiculous and also a bit more memorable.
Nevertheless, this film achieves what it set out to do, which, admittedly, wasn’t very much.