Jungle Cruise

"Jungle Cruise" (2020) is an upcoming adventure movie based on the Disney theme park ride of the same name. It stars Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, and is directed by Jaume Collet-Serra.



Based on the trailer, it looks reminiscent of "The Mummy" (1999) with a bit of "The African Queen" and "Romancing the Stone" thrown in.

So, Jumanji Poppins?

Not sure if the charm of both of these actors is enough to save this film.

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.

@Gaith, you have given this a very fair review. I think I leaned towards liking it a bit more only because movies of this type (early 1900’s pulp adventures) are few and far between these days, so anything new to it I forgive most of its faults.

That being said, I can’t agree more about the twist and third act. The twist was kind of ok, but it does lessen the stakes for the end and I felt like there could’ve and should’ve been a little more Mummy-esque action at the end than just “randomly inserted action set piece”.

I’d love to tinker with an edit, but after uploading it and sitting down with it, I just couldn’t figure out what to do outside of making it black and white and add serial type transitions.

Black and white would a fun change.
Yeah, a C+ which was a pleasant surprise. I was expecting a D- at best going in.