Jungle Cruise (2021)

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Edgar Ramírez

Based on Disneyland’s theme park ride where a small riverboat takes a group of travelers through a jungle filled with dangerous animals and reptiles but with a supernatural element.

Based on Disneyland’s theme park ride, ‘Jungle Cruise’ felt like one…and that’s not a good thing…

The story sees our heroin Lily (Emily Blunt) in search of the legendary Tears of the Moon – petals from a tree which has healing powers. The tree is located somewhere in the Amazon. Lily steals an arrowhead artifact from a museum, which is believed to hold the map to finding the tree.

She embarks on a journey to the Amazon to find the tree, along with her comic relief brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall). They hire Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson) to take them down the Amazon river. Frank has a few secrets of his own, and he, too, has been searching for the Tears of the Moon for a very long time.

The film takes us on an action-packed adventure ride. In pursuit of them, is the film’s antagonist and (another) comic relief character, Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons) – also in search of the tree. Around the halfway mark the film surprised me by becoming supernatural, but I like supernatural and certainly enjoyed that aspect of the movie. (I say ‘surprised me’ because I never watched a trailer beforehand and merely expected it to be a realistic treasure hunt movie in the vein of ‘The Lost City’). The visual effects were good and ‘Jungle Cruise’ sure does look good on screen.

So, if I enjoy supernatural, treasure hunt and adventure movies, why didn’t I enjoy the movie as much as I thought I would? As mentioned in the beginning, the film felt like a theme park ride. The film was far too implausible with too many conveniences and coincidences. Whenever Lily fell off a cliff or was flung through the air there was ALWAYS a branch (or rock, or whatever) she could hold on to, and she always fell in the most perfect ways and was able to hold on with very little effort. (Yawn!). Also, she can’t swim. Yet, when the situation arises where she simply must swim, she does it with incredible ease AND is able to hold her breath under water for a very, very long time. As someone who can’t swim, I know this is impossible. These are just a few examples; the entire film is laden with these unbelievable ‘saved by the bell’ moments. They managed to overcome obstacles with incredible ease – as if it was a theme park ride…

The film’s constant slapstick humour voided the film of any possible suspense. Yes, I know this is a comedy, but cracking silly jokes when running for your life just seemed completely out of place. I didn’t mind so much the humour during moments when it would have been perceived as funny, but the humour came at the most inappropriate times.

Unfortunately, for most parts I found the film too silly and downright stupid to be entertained, and almost stopped watching several times. Oh, and that clichéd, predictable ending…yawn, is it over yet?

‘Jungle Cruise’ only earned $220 million on a $200 million budget. The film received 11 award nominations – most for its visual effects.

Would I watch it again? No.