Jungle Cruise

By: Madeline Erb

Disney’s Jungle Cruise is a movie based on a Disneyland theme park ride, much like the Pirates of the Caribbean series. This film seems to share a great deal of DNA with that series. Like Pirates, the movie takes place on a boat, involves a quest for treasure and relies heavily on the charisma of the cast. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) and Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson) are well matched and make an excellent pair. But while Jungle Cruise is deeply enjoyable, it isn’t quite Pirates of the Caribbean, though it tries very hard to be.

Dr. Lily Houghton is on a search for the “Tears of the Moon,” the healing petals of the Tree of Life, said to cure any illness. Along with her brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall), and the skipper they hire, Frank Wolff, Houghton adventures through the Amazon River. Over the course of their journey, they face a great deal of peril – from a German u-boat, ancient undead conquistadors and the heavily CGI’d wildlife.

Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson mount a charming offensive. They’re the best part of this movie and are often enough to distract from the excessive CGI and a convoluted plot. The film is at its best when the two of them are bickering with one another. They play off each other very well. Jack Whitehall also does a great job, creating some good comedy bits, though the writing for his character is lacking. He’s yet another one of Disney’s recent gay characters – though MacGregor never specifically says the word gay. However, he is written as very stereotypically effeminate and he explains that his “interests lie elsewhere,” on the subject of women. I found myself wishing that Disney would for once say explicitly that a character is gay rather than beating around the bush, but I can’t fault the actor’s performance.

The villains made very little impact on me. Prince Joacham (Jessie Plemons) was an unbalanced German royal seeking the Tree of Life to aid the Germans in World War 1. His accent, which at one point causes him to pronounce “Jungle” as “Chongle,” was baffling. Our other villain is Aguirre (Edgar Ramírez), the leader of a group of undead conquistadors searching for the Tree to put an end to their curse. The conquistadors are clearly an attempt at recreating Barbossa and his crew from Pirates, but they lack the charm that made those characters enjoyable.

The film is directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who also directed the upcoming DC film, Black Adam. The direction is solid, and Collet-Serra gets fairly good performances out of most of his actors, but the writing and excessive use of CGI are where things fall flat. Every time I saw the jaguar in the film the fakeness of it irritated me.

Jungle Cruise has many faults, but it’s worth a watch. Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson are a delight to watch. The romance between their characters simmers under the surface of the movie and only really bubbles to the top at the end, in a fairly satisfying way. If you can look past all the CGI, it’s a very fun way to spend two hours and seven minutes – even if the film isn’t exactly what it wants to be.

Jungle Cruise is now available to purchase on Digital and will be released on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-Ray and DVD November 16.