{"id":9396,"date":"2024-11-30T11:58:09","date_gmt":"2024-11-30T16:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=9396"},"modified":"2024-11-30T11:58:09","modified_gmt":"2024-11-30T16:58:09","slug":"jungle-cruise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/30\/jungle-cruise\/","title":{"rendered":"Jungle Cruise"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Jungle Cruise<\/strong> (2021)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Disney\/Action-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 127 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (sequences of adventure violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jaume Collet-Serra\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Michael Green, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: James Newton Howard\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Flavio Labiano\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 30, 2021 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Edgar Ramirez, Jack Whitehall, Jesse Plemons, Paul Giamatti, Veronica Falcon, Dani Rovira, Quim Gutierrez, Dan Dargan Carter, Andy Nyman, Raphael Alejandro, Simone Lockhart, Pedro Lopez.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $117M (US)\/$221M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: * \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0I swear I wanted to like Disney\u2019s Jungle Cruise<\/strong> or as I like to call it, Pirates of the Amazon. It\u2019s the studio\u2019s latest attempt to turn one of their theme park attractions into a blockbuster movie a la Pirates of the Caribbean. I was in the mood for a cool jungle adventure movie. I hoped beyond hope it would be fun. Instead, it proves that POTC was a one-off. It\u2019s the only one that\u2019s any good. The others- The Haunted Mansion, The Country Bears, Tomorrowland and Mission to Mars- stink. You can add Jungle Cruise<\/strong> to the list of failures.<\/p>\n

\u00a0To call Jungle Cruise<\/strong> derivative would be a vast understatement. Indiana Jones himself would be at a loss to unearth a single original idea in the movie\u2019s protracted 127 minutes. It\u2019s a mix of a lot of better movies including Raiders of the Lost Ark, The African Queen, Avatar, Tomb Raider (the reboot), Jumanji (the newer ones), The Mummy (the 1999 one) and probably a dozen other movies. Put them all together, cover it in desperation and you have Jungle Cruise<\/strong>. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (The Shallows), it misses the mark by a mile and a half. Tonally, it\u2019s way off. Movies like this should have a playful tone. After all, they\u2019re designed for audiences looking for escapist summertime entertainment. Jungle Cruise<\/strong> feels like it\u2019s forcing itself on us, have fun or else. How can anybody enjoy a movie under such conditions?<\/p>\n

\u00a0The plot has the plucky heroine, botanist Dr. Lily Houghton (Blunt, A Quiet Place I & II), searching for the \u201cTears of the Moon\u201d, a mythical tree whose red petals are said to have healing powers. Just one petal could help cure cancer and all other incurable diseases. To find the tree, she will need a priceless arrowhead that\u2019s currently in the possession of the Royal Society and they\u2019re not about to hand it over to a woman chasing a myth. She helps herself to it instead and heads off to South America with her fussy, spoiled brother MacGregor (Whitehall, Bad Education) in tow.<\/p>\n

\u00a0They need to hire a boat to take them down the Amazon. Naturally, they hire a goofball with a rickety old boat. Frank \u201cSkipper\u201d Wolff (Johnson, late of the Fast & Furious movies) ekes out a living taking tourists down the Amazon on bogus adventures. After some negotiation and a lot of ado involving a jaguar and the sleazy harbormaster (Giamatti, San Andreas), the threesome heads off on their quest. They\u2019re not the only ones interested in finding the tree. German baddie Prince Joachim (Plemons, Game Night) wants to find the tree to help his country win WWI or some such foolishness. He chases after the heroes in a submarine. How he manages to sneak it in unnoticed is anybody\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The plot, in and of itself, isn\u2019t terrible. It\u2019s no better or worse than any jungle adventure through the ages starting with the Tarzan movies of the 30s and 40s. I have no problem with tall tales involving magical McGuffins, reanimated 16th<\/sup> century explorers, cannibalistic tribes and more snakes than you can shake a stick at. My only beef with the plot is this really asinine development that I won\u2019t even dignify with a reveal. I\u2019ll only say it\u2019s stupid and involves Frank. Also, the army of bees is just ludicrous. BTW, I\u2019m all for inclusiveness, but was it really necessary to make one of the main characters gay? It adds nothing at all to the story. It just feels like Disney is checking off a box.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The problem with Jungle Cruise<\/strong>, and it\u2019s a BIG one, is the CGI. There\u2019s too much of it. It consistently overwhelms the action. Practically everything, even the jungle surroundings, is CGI-rendered. It\u2019s bad CGI on top of everything else. I\u2019ve seen more convincing graphics in video games. The jaguar, who turns out to be a friendly one, looks too fake to be believed. The terrible effects took me completely out of the picture. This is incontrovertible proof of the superiority of practical FX. The original Raiders of the Lost Ark is 1000 times more convincing and it\u2019s over 40 years old.<\/p>\n

\u00a0So what about the two leads, Johnson and Blunt? Let me put it this way. As a match-up, they fall somewhere in the middle, far below Bogie and Hepburn (The African Queen) and Ford and Allen (Raiders of the Lost Ark) and just a smidge above Penn and Madonna (Shanghai Surprise) and Chamberlain and Stone (King Solomon\u2019s Mines). They have some amusing banter, but you could hardly describe their chemistry as magic. To be fair, Blunt makes an engaging heroine. Johnson, on the other hand, is completely miscast. His lousy performance in Jungle Cruise<\/strong> isn\u2019t due to lack of talent, but rather not finding a consistent tone for his character. He fluctuates between a gruff, hard-drinking grouch and a goofball scoundrel with a litany of bad jokes. Plemons camps it up as a textbook German villain complete with Kaiser-type uniform and exaggerated accent. All that\u2019s missing is the monocle.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As for pacing, Jungle Cruise<\/strong> moves like a bull in a china shop. It lumbers around noisily destroying everything in its path. In the process, it sucks the life right out of the theater or the living room depending on where you watch it. It\u2019s also available for streaming on Disney+. It doesn\u2019t really matter where you watch it; the end result is still the same. It\u2019s a shipwreck of an action-adventure that only goes to show theme park rides should remain just that. POTC was a fluke, Disney! Lightning doesn\u2019t necessarily strike in the same place twice.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jungle Cruise (2021)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Disney\/Action-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 127 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (sequences of adventure violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jaume Collet-Serra\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Michael Green, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: James Newton Howard\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Flavio Labiano\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 30, 2021 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Edgar Ramirez, Jack Whitehall, Jesse Plemons, Paul Giamatti, Veronica Falcon, Dani Rovira, Quim […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9583,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure","category-this-sucks-so-bad"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Jungle-Cruise-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9396"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9585,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9396\/revisions\/9585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}