The exposition-heavy voiceover that opens director Jaume Collet-Serra’s Jungle Cruise quickly lays out the lore of its story. The narration refers to a menacing Age of Exploration conquistador named Aguirre (Édgar Ramirez) who’s cursed to eternal torment in the Amazon for slaughtering indigenous tribes in search of the legendary Tree of Life, which possesses unparalleled healing powers. His corollary in the film’s present-day timeline, set in the early 20th century, is an evil German nobleman, Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons), who wants to find the tree solely for personal gain. By contrast, field botanist Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) seeks it out with the aim of changing the future of medicine.
The mixture of the historical and mythological, with a particular emphasis on the era of European expansion, immediately places the film in the lineage of the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Disney’s other major adaptation of one of their theme park rides. We meet Lily attempting to secure funding for her mission by sending her hapless brother, McGregor (Jack Whitehall), to speak in her stead, knowing that he will have an easier time appealing to an academic society made up exclusively of men. Later, when Lily and McGregor travel to the jungle on their own and hire a local boat captain, Frank (Dwayne Johnson), as their guide to where she thinks the tree is located, the boater continually talks down to her.
Despite invoking both the pervasive misogyny of this time and the deeper legacy of colonial brutality in the global South, Jungle Cruise’s general tone is one of silly whimsy. The film undercuts Frank’s snide attitude toward Lily with groan-inducing dad jokes and Johnson’s trademark (and tired) light insult humor, and even the moments of macabre creature-feature terror are consistently deflated by slapstick punchlines. It’s a surprising turn for Collet-Serra, best known for his effectively spartan horror films and mid-budget thrillers.
Still, the filmmaker’s talents do shine through, albeit in ways that run counter to the at times dizzying levels of contrasting movement that Gore Verbinski brought to his Pirates of the Caribbean films. Collet-Serra excels at emphasizing small, tactile details, as in the delicate play of light over dusty archives in the opening scene at the academic society and the shots of Lily sneaking around and palming documents and artifacts pertaining to her journey. Throughout, Collet-Serra grounds chaotic action sequences with quick insert shots of Lily or Frank making split-second decisions while maneuvering around enemies, subtly hailing their quick wits. These blink-and-you’ll-miss-them moments bring coherence to the scattered impulses of sequences that might have otherwise slipped into cartoonish ridiculousness.
Such deft touches elevate what otherwise feels like another formulaic contemporary Disney blockbuster. Neither the buddy nor potentially romantic dynamic between Johnson and Blunt feels believable, which might have brought pathos to a story that, long before the clumsy last act, settles for dull, effects-heavy Indiana Jones mimicry. Nothing here is as thrilling or fleshed out as the unexpectedly rich world and characters that Verbinski managed to spin out of another dated theme park attraction, though its bright images and streamlined narrative focus do admirably set it apart from Disney’s recent attempts at cannibalizing its IP arsenal with such dour (and dire) riffs like Craig Gillespie’s Cruella and Niki Caro’s Mulan.
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