Jungle Cruise
Jungle Cruise feels a lot like Pirates of the Caribbean, and while it doesn’t have the iconic lead performance that film did to turn it into an instant classic, it’s still a hell of a lot of fun.
Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) is determined to track down the Flower of the Moon. While her brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall) distracts an explorers scientific society, she sneaks backstage and steals a fabled arrowhead from under the nose of Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons), a nefarious German. Lily and MacGregor travel to the Amazon, where they get a ride upriver in search of the immortality granting Flower from Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson). But Wolff is not all that he seems, and his prodigious knowledge of the region is matched only by his talents for cheating, swindling and deceiving his clientele and enemies (vaguely Italian Paul Giamatti included). Nevertheless, if Lily and MacGregor want to get the Flower before Prince Joachim and an undead Spanish conquistador Aguirre (Edgar Ramirez), they’ll have to turn the uneasy alliance with Frank into a strong friendship.
It’s tough to not make comparisons to other, classic adventure movies when watching Jungle Cruise. There are definite comparables with Pirates of the Caribbean and Indiana Jones, along with a host of lesser siblings, sequels and rip-offs. Jungle Cruise never really does anything to distinguish itself from its ilk, but it also never feels unwelcome or anything less than upbeat, enjoyable fun.
Blunt is spectacular as Houghton, a combination of Keira Knightley and Harrison Ford. Her character is saddled with a romance that she has to frankly carry pretty heavily, but also gets a tonne of time to deliver competent adventuring and ingenuity throughout. Johnson pushes his acting limits in certain areas of this film, and not always successfully, but for the most part he is a fun addition - a dad-joke-cracking, mammoth hustler, who has secrets of his own. While he may struggle to carry the romantic elements of the plot off, his wisecracking and sidelong glances during schemes and the like are good, and his action chops undisputed. Whitehall, meanwhile, cracks jokes and provides comic relief.
Giamatti pops up in a ridiculous role, Italian accent fading in and out depending on the moment, and shoots for the rafters with a swaggering performance. Plemons and Ramirez both make a meal out of barebones villain characters, but Ramirez in particular feels hard done by.
Visually there is a lot to love here, and for kids in particular it is a colourful, fantastical adventure that evokes memories of the Disneyland ride the film is based on. From a family perspective, the only concern is that it’s a little long - at 2 hours and 7 minutes, even those of us in the media screening room were flagging.
Overall though, this does more right than it does wrong, and keeps you entertained throughout.
