Jungle Cruise Review

Like Pirates of the Caribbean, Jungle Cruise is an adventure film based on a theme park ride. Disney hopes to provide wholesome family fun with their Brazilian set film.

Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) is a botanist who wants to find the Tears of the Moon tree, deep in the Amazon Rainforest. She believes that the flowers could revolutionise medicine and help Britain’s war effort. In Brazil Lily and her brother, McGregor (Jack Whitehall) hire Frank (Dwayne Johnson), a river cruise captain and con artist to take them down the Amazon River. As they go deeper into the jungle the Houghtons and Frank face hostile tribes, cursed conquistadors, and a determined German prince.

Jungle Cruise wants to be seen in the same light as Indiana Jones and 1999’s The Mummy. They are all fantasy films that feature things like ancient curses and finding artifacts or legendary items. Jungle Cruise follows the template those films set out. Like The Mummy, Jungle Cruise had a prologue that showed the villains getting cursed and setting up the basic premise. The Mummy got even more specific with an early set-piece where the main female character was stuck on a ladder.

This predictability made Jungle Cruise tedious to watch. It’s a big blockbuster from Disney so a level of predictability was bound to happen but Jungle Cruise didn’t do anything to help it stand out. It was cookie-cutter filmmaking.

It seems like the producers had a checklist when making this film. The aim was just to make it as marketable as possible without any artistry or invention. The casting of Dwayne Johnson as a loveable rogue was to get bums on seats, the cursed conquistadors looked like they came from the second and the third Pirates of the Caribbean movies and despite the film taking place in 1916, the villain seem more like he was representing the German government of 1933 to 1945.

A lack of originality can be forgiven if the film can entertain. An area that does provide entertainment was the lead actors. Johnson is a box-office draw and Blunt is an incredibly talented actress. They worked well together and provided a lot of fun. Johnson was in the same role he normally plays, but he does it well, that’s what audiences like. Blunt was able to balance her character’s serious mission with a personality. Lily was determined and had lots of spunk. Lily had a fun dynamic with Frank.

The casting of Jack Whitehall was a point of contention. Disney has made a point that Whitehall’s character was gay but the LGBT community did not react well because Whitehall is straight. His character was portrayed as a stereotype because he was vain, into fashion, and the type of person who shouldn’t be going on an expedition into the jungle. He was more effeminate than his sister. One of the big gags based on his sexuality was he wanted to take lots of luggage on the cruise. However, compared to other characters that Disney has proclaimed to be gay, McGregor’s sexuality was more obvert. The key scene was when McGregor and Frank have a heart-to-heart and McGregor states he’s not interested in women.

When it came to the film’s set-pieces it was CGI overload. It felt like looking at a green screen because there was no physicality to many of the sequences. An example of this involved a waterfall – it looked like an infamous sequence in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Scenes set in London were clearly not shot in the British capital. The best action sequence was when the characters were escaping from Porto Velho because it seemed physical. There were sets, props, and stunts that made it a fun sequence. It wasn’t a case of staring at digital effects.

Children might enjoy Jungle Cruise as a light-hearted fantasy adventure but adults will probably get bored as it is so unoriginal.