{"id":49880,"date":"2021-08-02T14:43:20","date_gmt":"2021-08-02T18:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=49880"},"modified":"2021-08-02T14:43:32","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T18:43:32","slug":"jungle-cruise-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2021\/08\/jungle-cruise-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Jungle Cruise Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                \u201cJungle Cruise\u201d is the latest effort by Disney to turn one of its legendary theme park attractions into a movie. The gold standard, of course, is \u201cPirates of the Caribbean,\u201d the five-movie franchise that made nearly $1.5 billion at the domestic box office. Less successful were \u201cThe Country Bears,\u201d \u201cThe Haunted Mansion,\u201d and \u201cTomorrowland.\u201d The new film is not being released in an era where it can hope to reach \u201cPirates\u201d numbers, but I have no doubt that it can outperform the other three. My reasoning is simple: those other movies didn\u2019t have Dwayne Johnson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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                The former Rock is effortlessly charismatic and affable, practically a guarantee of blockbuster box office. He\u2019s also usually funny here, save for scenes where he\u2019s cracking jokes in the vein of the \u201cJungle Cruise\u201d ride. I said he was charismatic, not a miracle-worker. The other thing he can\u2019t do is come across as someone from 1916, when the movie takes place. He\u2019s very \u201cof his time,\u201d which is fine because he defines the era. The film pairs him with Emily Blunt, effortlessly charming an affable in her own way, and I\u2019d be happy to watch these two go on a Jungle Cruise without any obstacles. But this is an adventure movie, so there are going to have to be a fair amount of obstacles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                The story sees the headstrong Lily (Blunt) travel to the Amazon with her fussy brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall) in search of a tree whose leaves can instantly cure any disease. They\u2019ll need a boat and a skipper, and they mean to hire the greedy Nilo (Paul Giamatti), but through some colorful conning, they hire the down-on-his luck Frank (Johnson), who needs the siblings\u2019 cash. Also after the tree is evil German Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemmons), who believes the tree is the key to winning World War I. He enlists the help of some zombified Spanish conquistadors led by Aguirre (Edgar Ramirez), who could really use the tree to break the curse that\u2019s made them something less than human for the past 300 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                Lily and Frank bicker with one another and occasionally surprise each other. You\u2019ll be yelling at the screen for them to just make out already. They encounter jungle-themed dangers like piranhas, hippos, and lots and lots of snakes. They also encounter a hostile tribe of apparent headhunters, though if you\u2019ve been following the news, you\u2019ll know that Disney won\u2019t allow them to actually be headhunters in 2021. The story is entirely predictable, save for a twist around the two-thirds mark that the movie can\u2019t quite make convincing. If you thought Johnson was out of place in 1916..,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                I don\u2019t have much to add beyond reiterating that \u201cJungle Cruise\u201d is exactly what you\u2019d expect. Plemmons steals the movie as the villain, who may be going crazy after a few days (weeks?) on a submarine. Johnson gets turned to stone at one point, inviting jokes about his former nickname (\u201cHaven\u2019t you heard? He doesn\u2019t want to be The Rock anymore. He wants to be Dwayne now.\u201d) The tree with the magical petals bears a striking resemblance to the Tree of Life at Disney\u2019s Animal Kingdom park, minus all the animal carvings. This movie will probably do well enough to spawn a sequel, and maybe that movie can make \u201cJungle Cruise\u201d the rightful heir to \u201cPirates of the Caribbean.\u201d Disney doesn\u2019t quite have the next \u201cPirates\u201d here, but at least they\u2019re keeping things in Adventureland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: C<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJungle Cruise\u201d is playing in theaters and available on Disney+ Premium Access. The film is rated PG-13 for sequences of adventure violence. Its running time is 127 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver                 \u201cJungle Cruise\u201d is the latest effort by Disney to turn one of its legendary theme park attractions into a movie. The gold standard, of course, is… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":49881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[543],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49880"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49880"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49882,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49880\/revisions\/49882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}