If not a majority, then certainly a substantial percent of folks living in this country have been on Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise ride. And if you were over 4-years old the first time you took the cruise, you probably wondered why you spent the time. There’s no doubt, the ride is terrible—from the corn ball (and dated) surprises planted in the murky waters of the fake Amazon to the low-brow, pun-laden, attempts at comedy (and studies have proven that the pun is the lowest form of humor… it’s science) from your ship’s Captain, it’s just the worst. And yet we continue to go on the ride through the years… there’s always a line out the back. And I think we do it because we are all in on the joke and the ridiculous ride has evolved into something enjoyable, fun, and nostalgic. And so it is with Jungle Cruise the movie—it’s also silly and fun, but, unlike the ride itself, a fairly well made piece of entertainment.
The idea for a feature film based on the Jungle Cruise ride was conceived years ago after the success of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. I’ll note that Jungle Cruise is not as good as the first Pirates movie—makes sense, Pirates is the better ride too; but it does succeed at many levels by using a similar formula to Pirates—a combination of acceptable story line, colorful characters and cast, and execution that holds tight to the spirit and attributes of the ride. Dwayne The Rock Johnson, who produced the film, is solid as Frank the Jungle Cruise skipper. Emily Blunt (A Quite Place 2) is loads of fun playing botanist Lily Houghton who enlists Frank to guide her to a mythical tree of Amazon legend whose flower can cure any disease. Johnson and Blunt fight and flirt along the dangerous trip creating an effective Grant-Hepburn-like hate-love chemistry. The casting of the films other rich characters is also on the mark, particularly the assignment of Jesse Peimons (the FX Fargo series) as a sinister and quite-mad German aristocrat who is after the same tree to aid the Reich in prevailing in the ongoing first World War, and Edgar Ramirez as a 16th century Spanish conquistador cursed to eternally reside on the river for his unworthy attempt to exploit the tree's powers.
Maybe you are all stroking your chins now… squinting your eyes and thinking about German war-time conquests, snakes, hero-heroin love-hate relationships, and sea-fairing undead… have we seen this somewhere before? Maybe just down the Disney Adventure Land road—cough, the Indiana Jones ride… cough, cough, Captain Sparrow? It is true that Jungle Cruise looks a lot like previous swashbuckling classics—heck, there’s even a scene with Johnson and Blunt swinging on a vine that looks almost identical to Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner’s aerials in Romancing the Stone back in the day. But these usages are more of an eye-wink homage to the genre than artifacts of lazy writing. The film does suffer, however, from a common adventure/action-picture malady—that is, too much action in the action. There are so many moving pieces to some of the later confrontation scenes that the end effect is more disarray than excitement. Jungle Cruise is also better in its first half, with the dimwitted fun diffusing more to spectacle in the second. And yet, a smile prevailed across my face as the film ended. Satisfactions with mediocrity or something else? Go see it and decide for yourselves – 7 out of 10.
