Jungle Cruise

Jungle Cruise is a movie that is in no way a rip off of any given property, but takes so liberally and obviously from so many different properties that it ends up feeling extremely derivative. Perhaps in the hands of a true master like Tarantino this would come across as a masterful homage but in the hands of a significantly more middling director like Collet-Serra it is merely banal or even hackneyed.

The basic premise concerns a mystical treasure that a plunky British woman explorer and her foppish brother are trying to uncover in a continent far from the civilizing influence of Europeans. She is forced to team up with a rough-and-ready type who acts as expedition leader and a bit of an expert on local affairs, and while they initially clash they ultimately grow together over the course of the adventure. So basically, The Mummy (1999). Rachel Weisz is replaced with Emily Blunt, Brendan Fraiser with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, John Hannah with Jack Whitehall, and the setting is South America instead of Africa. The story is moved about ten years forward, from the 1920s to the 1930s, to accommodate a Nazi antagonist who hunts rare occult artifacts, straight out of Indiana Jones. The other antagonists are supernaturally cursed explorers-turned-zombies whose backstory seems eerily similar to the ghost ship in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Funny, too, as both being Disney ride-to-movie adaptations makes this parallelism even harder to ignore.

For what is predominantly an action movie, I also found the action completely lackluster. There seems to be this trend in recent blockbuster movies where every film is trying to out-do the field. A kind of stunt coordinator one-upmanship. This also could be driven by a belief that the only way to get people to actually leave their comfy couches for a movie theater is to create ever bigger and wilder spectacle. I don’t think this is to the benefit of the films that do it. The further the action in films like Jungle Cruise drift away from grounded believability, what a determined and well trained person could do in any given moment, and away from servicing the plot, using action to reveal character, advance the story, or both, the less engaging the movies become. Indiana Jones hanging off the side of a tank works because it feels like something a person could actually do. John Wick blasting through Russian mafia works because it feels like what an insane badass could actually pull off with a genuine talent for firearms, a little luck, and a lot of justified vengeance-fueled fury. When The Rock turns an old steam boat against the raging waters above an insanely tall waterfall and drives out of danger it does not feel all that possible. When a tree the size of a skyscraper starts dropping train car sized branches and the aforementioned steam boat is able to artfully dodge every single one, it doesn’t feel like a plausible scenario. These issues are probably amplified by the fact that basically all these moments, and plenty more, were done in a computer which unfortunately results in a tinge of uncanny valley. So things don’t feel as real because they don’t look quite real. It probably isn’t an accident that the best looking action in the movie is in the very beginning, as it is both the simplest and the most likely to be shot practically.

As the industry coalesces around action movies, action movies are coalescing around the ridiculous and grandiose set pieces of superhero movies. These are fine in that genre, but maybe a little restraint is warranted elsewhere. As a result, Jungle Cruise fails to capture the essence of the films it is trying to emulate. Where Indiana Jones captures realistic and exciting action, Jungle Cruise is barely believable and even bordering on the absurd. Where Pirates of the Caribbean modernizes the swashbuckling swagger of Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone, Jungle Cruise is just another generic action film with some 1930s paint on the facade. The action beats of the film end up feeling like another glossy Fast and the Furious type movie, only on the Amazon river and with no cars.

The action wasn’t the only place I felt let down. Some of the character interplay also left a lot to be desired. The relationship between the two leads lacks chemistry. Blunt and Johnson are certainly not lacking in charisma, and a decent serving of talent, but they never really click on screen. The film struggled to convince me they would find common ground as people, let alone develop feelings for one another. The film, inevitably, must do a romance plot seemingly because it is what all of the films Jungle Cruise is emulating do. But the pieces don’t really fit together and the scenes where they are exploring that space universally drag. On a very different, but still character driven, note: Jack Whitehall’s character being gay ends up being a totally wasted idea. It is used as a means for setting up his attitude towards his sister, and why he goes along with her schemes and would follow her to the ends of the Earth, which I think the filmmakers felt they must do since they also wanted to incorporate the prevalence of chauvinism during that time period into the story. However, that is basically all it does. He has no romantic feelings for anyone for the duration of the movie, nor does he lust after anyone as a throw away character moment or to set up a bit of physical comedy or really anything. He might as well be asexual for all the movie cares about a detail so specific and challenging for that character in that setting. In some senses, this is better than a possible alternative where they play to all the worst camp stereotypes of what it means to be gay, but it also leaves the whole gayness of the character feeling token. Like an executive somewhere felt it was important to check a representational box rather than an inspired writer or director seeing how a fully realized, three dimension homosexual character could add a new and compelling element to the tried and true formula of this kind of action film.

One last note on the script, a place the movie does succeed is at being funny. They did not entirely abandon the pun-filled goofiness of the Disney ride. It wasn’t a complete triumph in this regard. Several of the comedic bits didn’t work for me and the way in which setups and punchlines from the Jungle Cruise ride were placed in the movie could feel a bit shoehorned in. The movie is at its weakest when it is most closely recreating the experience of the ride in movie form and at its strongest later when the puns are just part of The Rock’s modus operandi. Still, the movie does an admirable job of being a proper action comedy. Again, more in the vein of The Mummy than Indiana Jones, humor here is integral to the story, not just a way to create respite from the tension and action. While it may have failed to wow me as a piece of pulp inspired adventure, I did get a few laughs out of it which isn’t nothing.

Between the annoyingly “modern” action sensibilities and the weaker character work, it is hard to escape the feeling that Jungle Cruise is devoid of heart. On its face, it seems like it is trying to be another homage to the adventures of pulp novels of Doc Savage and Alan Quartermain. In reality, it is a third or fourth generation clone of that genetic source material. So it feels derivative, empty, and papered over with meaningless spectacle because it doesn’t really understand why what it is trying to be has been so successful, only that this type of thing did well in the past and ought to do well now. Not an unwatchable, or even unenjoyable, two hours and some odd minutes of filmmaking but still a major disappointment nonetheless. If I didn’t already think the success and quality of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie was lightning in a bottle, I would certainly be convinced now.

Would Recommend: If what you are in the mood for is nothing more complicated than a big, dumb action movie.

Would Not Recommend: If you love Indiana Jones, Romancing the Stone, and/or The Mummy, and don’t want to see that genre tarnished by a poor imitator.