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.
Let me start by saying that I love adventure movies. I grew up in the 1980s, after all; I was there, “Romancing the Stone” with Michael Douglas and escaping, um, rolling stones with Indiana Jones. So I resolutely did not let the crappiness of the “Jungle Cruise” trailer affect me. “Just go with it,” I told myself on the day of the press screening. “Embrace your inner nine-year-old.” Instead of immersing me in nostalgia, the consequent two hours made me long for the days when such films were actually made with skill and passion.
Based on a Disney theme park theme ride, the SFX-laden, poorly written, dumb-as-nails “Jungle Cruise” is the definition of a corporate product, tailor-made to adhere to audience expectations. It’s got two glamorous A-listers — Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt — headlining, plus a supporting cast of stellar character actors (Jesse Plemons, Paul Giamatti, Edgar Ramírez) hamming it way up for those studio paychecks. It’s got a hip European director, Jaume Collet-Serra, the man whose inconsistency (from Liam Neeson thrillers to glossy horror flicks) has been very consistent.
It’s got a semblance of a story: Blunt’s pseudo-feminist protagonist Lily embarks on a search for a wondrous lost place deep in the jungle, with the help of her gay brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall), and Johnson’s hunky skipper Frank. The only reason I am simplifying character descriptions to single adjectives is that these are the attributes given to our heroes: one is an independent woman who wears pants (I can’t stress how much that fact is painfully reiterated in the film — only for her to (spoiler alert!) fall into the arms of a man at the end), another is the quirky and sensitive gay support system (haven’t seen that before), and as for Frank, well, he’s The Rock. Wise-cracking, irresistible to women, supermassive, really deep but kinda shallow. ’Nuff said.
They are pursued by Jesse Plemons’s eeeevil German Prince Joachim (I friggin’ love Plemons, but this caricature overacting doesn’t suit him), as well as the dead conquistador Aguirre (Ramírez) and his gang of horridly-CGI-d ghouls, one covered in honey and the other, well, I am not sure what the hell’s going on there. There are also convenient encounters with dangerous, heavily-CGI’d creatures and indigenous tribes. Lily discovers the truth about Frank, and lo and behold, animosity morphs into l’amour.
The ending is a garish assault of CGI. Is everything in here CGI? The jungle, the waterfalls, the animals, the sky, the actors… The film surely feels like it was manufactured by a computer — an extended algorithm of what audiences respond to was applied, and boom, we get a series of eyeball-gouging, brain-melting visuals, some throwaway lines, and Paul Giamatti, whose character sports a gold tooth, and whose purpose I am still trying to figure out.
Where is that sense of wonder, of discovery, the “can’t wait to see what happens next” thrill? No amount of digital bees, snakes, anthropomorphic jungles, floods (and drainages — where does the river GO when it drains?), magical petals, cuddly leopards, or not-even-remotely-frightening zombies can mask the fact that there’s nothing going on under the surface. Except for some CGI piranhas.
In Theaters and on Disney+ with Premier Access July 30th
