Walt Disney Pictures
Another film in Disney’s pandemic backlog is finally making its way to the big and small screen, this one based on another classic Disneyland attraction: The Jungle Cruise (the film’s title drops the ‘The’ from the ride’s name). But with such a long delay, is it worth taking the trip?
The film’s story starts in 1916, two years into ‘The Great War’, as Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) and her brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall) are attempting to get a snooty scientific group to fund a journey into the Amazon (I believe the actual theme park ride is set on the Nile) to find some mythical flower that can cure all the ills of the world (Lily’s brother does all the work because women are not allowed to do anything but be women). In the film’s prologue, we saw a group of conquistadors led by Aguirre (Edgar Ramirez) fall ill in the area Lily wishes to explore, nursed back to health by the natives who are then savagely attacked by Aguirre and his men. But a curse is placed upon them, making them a part of the jungle forever in a type of living death and only the water from the river can release them. So they are stashed in a cave far away from any water.
Lily steals an artifact, an arrowhead, that she needs to help guide her to the precise spot of the flower and makes her way to Brazil, with her brother, to book passage. We meet jungle cruise captain Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson) before Lily does, giving one of his theme park-like tours … complete with all of the cheesy puns you’d hear on the actual theme park ride, mechanical wildlife and a native ‘attack’. He even shows them the backside of water! Frank is a great showman and the tourists buy everything he sells, believing their lives are in great danger for most of the ride. But Frank is about to lose his boat to Nilo (Paul Giamatti), to whom Frank owes money. A miscommunication (on purpose when money is mentioned) leads Lily to believe Frank is Nilo, the man she is to rent a boat from. One thing leads to another and Lily and MacGregor find themselves on Frank’s boat in search of a myth Frank says they’ll never find. What they don’t know is that Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons) is also searching for the flower to help his father (he’s said to be the second son of Kaiser Wilhelm) win the war. But he’s one step ahead and knows the secret to releasing Aguirre … which unleashes a boatload of supernatural action upon our hapless heroes. And Frank just may have a few secrets of his own.
I have been to Walt Disney World a couple of times but for some reason I never bothered to take the Jungle Cruise ride, but thanks to YouTube I was able to check it out to see how much of the ride made it into the movie. And the answer is quite a bit, from the puns to the backside of water to Trader Sam (who, in the movie, is now a woman). Like the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, almost all of the ride elements are right up front and then the story unfolds. I honestly had no idea what the story was going to be about because I hadn’t even bothered to watch the trailer. As much as I enjoyed the ‘Pirates’ film, I suppose I should have been a little more interested in Jungle Cruise but my unfamiliarity with the ride itself was probably the biggest hindrance.
That being said, I’m actually glad I went into the film with zero preconceived notions of what it was going to be about. I had no clue the supernatural elements were going to play such an important part in the story … or that they were there at all … and I was all in. Of course some may say ghostly conquistadors are a bit too close to ghostly pirates, and they may be right but they still have an interesting backstory (Aguirre was a real person, but this story is complete fiction).
What really makes the film work is the wonderful chemistry between Blunt and Johnson. They just mesh so well and their banter comes so naturally to them both, almost to the point that it seems they’ve known each other for years. One of the film’s running gags is everyone’s astonishment that a woman is wearing pants, and Frank refers to Lily as ‘Pants’ for most of the movie … and it somehow never gets old. She returns the jibes by referring to Frank as ‘Skippy’. Through their performances, they both feel like real people as well, not just caricatures along for the ride. Just based on this alone, I’d pay to see the two of them do more movies together.
Jungle Cruise also makes a bit of film history for the Disney company with MacGregor. When we first meet him, Jack Whitehall plays MacGregor as the stuffy, upper crust Englishman who is a bit of a stereotype, not really wanting to leave the comforts of home so he tries to bring the comforts with him (there is a funny scene of Frank asking what’s in each and every trunk MacGregor attempts to load onto the boat), and the film certainly plays with the male-female role reversal between MacGregor and Lily. During an overnight stop, MacGregor and Frank have a chance to talk and bond a bit, and MacGregor talks about how he was to have been married on three occasions but never went through with it because his interests ‘happily lie elsewhere’. He doesn’t have to say anything else and Frank understands, toasting ‘to elsewhere’. It was just a simple scene, nothing too overt, but it was handled beautifully and Whitehall played it with all the sincerity in the world, making this the first ‘coming out’ of a character in a Disney feature film (cue the torches, pitchforks and angry villagers … or Million Moms). It was a lovely moment so kudos to the writers and the actors for making this work without being exploitative or a joke.
The film is superbly directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (who is currently working with Johnson on the DC Comics film Black Adam), who handles both the action and the quieter scenes with equal skill. The writing is sharp, the production design really makes you feel like they filmed this on a jungle cruise, and the special effects are mostly great (some CGI animals are a bit cartoony, including Frank’s cat Proxima). If I have any quibble with the film it’s that it’s just a tad too long. During the trip, for instance, Lily sees some ridiculous pink dolphin-like creatures in the river that Frank says will induce nightmares if she looks them directly in the eye. It does pay off later in the film, but it really wasn’t necessary. And frankly, as much as I enjoy a Paul Giamatti performance … he really was wasted. His Nilo was just another unnecessary plot device to cause friction with Frank, who really didn’t need the nemesis. And Jesse Plemons is fine as the prince, but I had a hard time understanding his German accent a lot of the time.
But these are very minor quibbles. I came into Jungle Cruise thinking it was going to be a better made-for-Disney Plus movie than theatrical film and I was wrong. The direction, writing and acting, particularly from Blunt, Johnson and Whitehall, made this a thoroughly enjoyable ride and one that I’d even be willing to take a second time. So book your passage now on Disney’s Jungle Cruise.
Want to see Jungle Cruise and judge for yourself? Click on the images below to see the movie, and be sure to come back and tell us what you thought!
Jungle Cruise has a run time of 2 hours 7 minutes and is rated PG-13 for sequences of adventure violence.
Walt Disney Pictures
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