Movie Reaction: Jungle Cruise

Formula: The African Queen ^ Pirates of the Caribbean:The Curse of the Black Pearl

 

I do my best to be transparent and own up to my blind spots. I know I can't be purely objective about the movies I see. Nothing bothers me more than reading a review where it's clear that the person just doesn't like that kind of movie. It happens all the time with horror. If you think that slasher movies are dumb, then all you will see is the flaws, even when watching an effective slasher movie. On the other end of the spectrum though, I know when a movie is overly catered to me, I'll forgive a lot of issues. I love Disney Parks. I love the Jungle Cruise ride. The Curse of the Black Pearl is a top 10 movie all time for me, so I reject the notion that just because the inspiration for a movie is a crass brand play, the resulting movie can't be good. I also think Emily Blunt is flawless and Dwayne Johnson is a limitless source of charisma. In other words, Jungle Cruise would have to really mess things up for me give it an unfavorable assessment.

 

That said, it's not like I'm incapable of thrashing a bad movie based on a Disney ride. It's true that the first Pirates movie and Tomorrowland are among my favorite movies. However, I also recognize that The Haunted Mansion is a muddled disaster, The Country Bears completely misses the mark, and all the subsequent Pirates sequels have failed to capture the magic of the original. I'm an easy mark who will eat up every callback and easter egg, but I still want a fun, functional movie.

 

Thankfully, Jungle Cruise is a fun, functional movie. Dwayne Johnson plays a failing jungle skipper on the Amazon, who is hired by Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) and her foppish brother, MacGregor (Jack Whitehall) to go deep into the jungle in search of the mythical Tears of the Moon (i.e., the tree of life). They are pursued by Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons), a German aristocrat who wants to use the Tears to win the war. Oh yeah, it is set in 1916 during WWI. Of course, there's a curse as well that goes back to the explorer Aguirre's expedition down the Amazon. The movie is very much Disney trying to do The Curse of the Black Pearl again in a slightly different venue. And frankly, I'm here for it.

 

It's hard to be against this cast, although the movie does coast on their charisma a lot. Dwayne Johnson doesn't disappear into roles, and it really does look like he's playing dress up in his skipper outfit. His character, Frank, doesn't need to be a tank. Johnson makes it work, but I get the sense that if he wasn't involved in the development of the movie, he wouldn't've been the pick for the role. Emily Blunt's character is thin to the point that her main personality trait is that she wears pants, but again, it's Emily Blunt. I'll watch Emily Blunt be generally agreeable in just about anything. I like Jesse Plemons being a silly psychopath, even though his master plan was devised by the South Park underpants gnomes*. Jack Whitehall actually does get some shading that I appreciated. He's an upper crust dandy, but there's some real thought put into why he on this journey that he clearly doesn't want to be on. That said, I fully expect a round of exhausting Twitter discourse about him that I'm not looking forward to. Aguirre and the cursed conquistadors are non-characters. They do look cool.

 

*Step 1: Steal the Tears of the Moon. Step 2: <Shrug>. Step 3: Win the war for Germany!

 

This is a useful movie to explain what makes The Curse of the Black Pearl so great. Jungle Cruise has all the same action and visual effects. What it's missing is the character notes and details around the margins. There's no Jack Sparrow-sized disruptor. The world isn't as populated with Cottons or Norringtons. The cursed villains are completely anonymous. Oh, and the Pirates score is the forgotten MVP of that movie. I really didn't care for the Jungle Cruise music. None of that is getting stuck in my head.

 

Jungle Cruise is a pretty perfect "2nd choice movie". In the future, no one will ever suggest watching Jungle Cruise. They'll say they want to watch Pirates of the Caribbean but realize they watched those pretty recently. So instead, they'll watch Jungle Cruise, which scratch the same itch but not quite as well. And yes, this is just another excuse for me to talk about how much I love the first Pirates movie.

 

Jungle Cruise is an enjoyable movie. It does right by the ride by including all the trademark "dad jokes". I appreciated all the callbacks to the parks. While I don't need 5 more Jungle Cruise movies, I am excited by the hinting at S.E.A. references* (or maybe I just chose to see them in there). It's hard for me to see how anyone going into Jungle Cruise with an open mind would have a bad time watching it. Similarly, if you already look at this as creatively bankrupt Disney scraping the bottom of the idea well, then please don't see this. No one needs that negative energy for something as lightweight as this. Personally, I'm just glad to have another movie for my "I really want to go back to Disney World" rotation.

 

*S.E.A. or the Society of Explorers and Adventurers is a fictional organization that ties together several Disney attractions. There's a very loose mythology to it, but it serves as an easy way to connect numerous rides that are otherwise unrelated. In terms of a cinematic universe, it's a simple way to connect anything from Big Thunder Mountain Railroad to Hong Kong's Mystic Manor as stories while still maintaining a consistent cast. I don't need a Disney Ride Cinematic Universe, but if one is inevitable, this would be a great way to do it.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend