Jungle Cruise (2021)

Jungle Cruise (2021)

 

5/10

Starring

Dwayne Johnson

Emily Blunt

Édgar Ramírez

Jack Whitehall

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

Well, Walt Disney made the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise based on a theme park ride which made them hundreds of millions, so why do they not try with another ride, Jungle Cruise.

The movie takes all the necessary steps to make sure it follows everything you have seen in all jungle adventure movies, there are no surprises in this flick. As a whole the movie is watchable, but there is no need to jump over any table to go see it. Because in comparison to any other good movie, it fails.

The movie seems to borrow its setup from The Mummy (the one of Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz). In this movie we have this brother and sister pair Lily (Emily Blunt) and MacGregor (Jack Whitehall) go out in search with a guide named Frank, who seem to know the terrain like the back of his hand.

Lily is the strong adventurous type who is in search for the Tree of Life which is believed to have healing abilities. She is a Botany graduate and wants to find and study the tree’s healing abilities. MacGregor is her brother who is also a smart, but just not as strong willed and passionate like Lily. Their search led them to meet Frank (Dwayne Johnson) who drives a beat-up almost dead steam boat and does tours of the Amazon jungle with it. They hired Frank to guide them on this adventure, while being chased by a German who seem to have unlimited amount of resources. Lily stole an artifact from the German who too was seeking out the Tree of Life.

The screenplay/story is all soggy and the editing not the best is have seen from Disney. For example the whole stunt double for Blunt, it was easy to spot when it was a stunt double and when it was Blunt, each time. And get ready for CGI overload.

The movie does some boat stunts that just looks like something you will see in the Fast and the Furious franchise, if the franchise used boats not cars.

That said, the onscreen chemistry between Johnson and Blunt is undeniably sweet even though the story and the adventure journey is mediocre. But their love connection takes a back seat like three rows back to that of The Mummy. Unlike The Mummy, where the feelings were built on the challenges they faced and the fear of death. Here, the movie takes a fifteen minutes hiatus to just have Lily and Frank alone together doing nothing else but bond. That fifteen minutes was a long daft waste of screen time and added to the boredom. It is hard to suspend common sense when you have seen such romantic pairing done better numerous times over.

So Jungle Cruise is on Disney+, I have the feeling that Disney is hoping to make a franchise out of this like they did Pirates of the Caribbean.