Jungle Cruise (2021)
This is a weird flick, clearly cobbled together to check off boxes: it's primarily based on a Disneyland attraction, so the boat trip up the river has to be the main attraction. It's a The Rock Disney family flick, so it's got to have family-friendly action. Major plot points and themes are shamelessly copied from the PotC flicks, most notably the first and fourth entries, and the core dynamic between the three mains is also lifted straight from
The Mummy '99.
So, then, how is it? It's... okay. There's a mid-movie plot swerve which I didn't see coming, but also serves to lessen the stakes. Most of the movie has a heavy yellow-green filter, to evoke both the WW1 period setting and the jungle humidity, but while I generally don't mind unrealistic color grading, as it's obviously a very deliberate tool wielded by directors, in this case the filter is much too strong and sickly looking. There's a sequence involving rapids where the grading completely disappears, and the movie looks far better for a few minutes.
Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt have some fun banter, and she's one of the few actresses in Hollywood who's both beautiful and has enough presence that the audience doesn't fear for her being crushed to pieces in a theoretical romp with The Rock. The romance is angle is still undercooked and awkward, however.
Finally, the inevitable third-act action sequences become tiresome and numbing. People often complain about MCU movies inevitably ending in big effects-heavy battles, but I almost never find myself checking out from them, as the characters are compelling enough, and the action quirky enough, to keep me involved. Not so here.
Grade:
C+. If you've got an active Disney+ subscription, it's not a total waste of time.