'Jungle Cruise' review: Johnson and Blunt can't save voyage Los Angeles Times
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We see no blood, but given the blades involved, there’s no doubt as to the fates of these unfortunates. Someone nearly tumbles to her death during the melee, as well, but instead lands safely on a double-decker bus. Before diving into water, Lily strips down to her modest 1916-era skivvies.
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It wants to have your cannibal-natives cake and critique it too, at least in theory. Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies.
Great for the family!
But for him, he needs to be closer to someone to truly care for them—and he’s been looking for that connection for a while now. “One person to care about in this world—that’s enough for me.” Which is also a nice sentiment. Madcap adventure is given a comic twist in the cult classic The Princess Bride.
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He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. The inspiration for Jungle Cruise isn’t found in ancient legend or turn-of-the-century storybook, but rather a ride—the beloved Jungle Cruise ride found at most Disney parks. If only the core charms that have given the Disneyland ride such longevity weren’t so smothered by overstuffed plot. Compared to other attempts to turn theme park attractions into fresh revenue streams, it’s not as lifeless as The Haunted Mansion or Tomorrowland.
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He must be brave, too, living as he does in this little-explored jungle. Those petals would’ve been nice, given all the diseases that Conquistadors introduced to the New World, but no matter. Aguirre and his cohorts disappeared in those Brazilian jungles long ago, and the Tears of the Moon faded into barely remembered myth—a bedtime story for a few, perhaps, but nothing more.
Wolff and Houghton interrupt their budding romance to fight off Joachim (hammed to the hilt by Jesse Plemons), a mad German prince in a submarine, and Aguirre (Edgar Ramirez), a Spanish conquistador who’s been undead for 400 years and looks like it. Houghton is in search of flower petals from an ancient tree, called Tears of the Moon, which can only be found after Houghton steals a sacred arrowhead containing a map that will lead her to there. Even a single, falling petal is said to cure any illness or break any curse.
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On The Zambezi Queen, off shore activities such as a water based game-drive, fishing and bird watching are available, as well as on shore activities such as getting up close and personal with local village life in Namibia. A cruise along the Kinabatangan River offers a glimpse into the unexplored and unique wildlife and rainforests of Borneo. The Kinabatangan River, which is the longest river in Sabah, provides a unique and rich ecosystem.
Johnson can make nearly any character likable; here, Frank's silly, punny jokes are also a fun nod to the Disney ride's vibe. Lily bucks social mores of the time by having a job and a Ph.D., knowing how to defend herself, and even wearing trousers (Frank calls her "Pants"). She also has a refreshingly close relationship with her brother, who's posh and fussy but is still willing to follow her into murky, life-threatening situations. Other members of the cast are underused -- like Paul Giamatti as a local riverboat mogul and Edgar Ramirez as head conquistador Aguirre -- or they overact, like Plemons' caricature of a sociopathic German villain, Prince Joachim. Exploitation director Greg McLean chooses a numbingly middling approach to tell this true exploration story; the movie is too blunt to be sympathetic but also too careful to be thrilling. Even as Jungle begins with its most innocuous scenes, McLean adopts a short attention-span approach, cutting every couple of seconds and creating a monotonous rhythm, a blur of movements and events.
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Paul Giamatti plays a gold-toothed, sunburned, cartoonishly “Italian” harbor master who delights at keeping Frank in debt. Edgar Ramirez is creepy and scary as a conquistador whose curse from centuries ago has trapped him in the jungle. Jesse Plemons plays the main baddie, Prince Joachim, who wants to filch the power of the petals for the Kaiser back in Germany (he's Belloq to the stars' Indy and Marion, trying to swipe the Ark).
With the arrival of Zack Snyder's latest Rebel Moon chapter on Netflix, we rank every one of the director's films—from bad to, well, less bad—by Metascore. Like Vogon poetry, the plot of Disney’s “Jungle Cruise” is mostly unintelligible and wants to beat you into submission. Manically directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, this latest derivation of a theme-park ride shoots for the fizzy fun of bygone romantic adventures like “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981). That it misses has less to do with the heroic efforts of its female lead than with the glinting artifice of the entire enterprise. Family audiences looking for a lighthearted quest movie can’t go wrong with Onward. This animated Pixar classic follows the exploits of two brothers who are trying to complete a magic spell that will allow them to spend 24 hours with their late father.
It never slows down long enough for viewers to get to know the characters, nor does it speed up enough to achieve a decent pace. Yes, the Tears of the Moon make a tantilizing bedtime story—one that Lily banks on being much more. But before this jungle cruise is over, she might be shedding a few tears of her own. Of all the longtime favorite rides of the Disneyland theme parks, the Jungle Cruise, introduced in 1955, is among the most enduringly captivating. Those central elements survive in Disney’s big-screen offshoot, though just barely, given the writers’ assiduous efforts to drown them in overplotting.
Johnson plays Frank Wolff, the captain of a ramshackle riverboat who offers the cheapest jungle cruises in Brazil -- plus a nonstop flow of groan-worthy puns. Common Sense is the nation's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of all kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in the 21st century. I don’t mean to suggest that these are equivalent experiences exactly. Personally I prefer the YouTube version, which may have been filmed in a giant Anaheim water tank festooned with imported plants and mechanical elephants, yet still somehow manages to offer up the less artificial, more persuasively inhabited jungle scenery of the two.
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