Jungle Cruise (***)
In which Dwayne Johnson can cope with anything but a woman in pants
Like any good pun, Jungle Cruise is sure to make more than a few in the audience groan. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t funny.
I’m a sucker for movies where the protagonists run through tunnels with torches looking for buried treasure, and Jungle Cruise is right up that alley. Led by Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, this search for the long-lost cursed thing is definitely worth the price of admission. There’s fun action sequences, witty banter, an exciting score, and lots of jungle-related danger around every corner. If you’re a fan of Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, National Treasure, or even Pirates of the Caribbean, this movie is a great way to scratch that itch.
Now, does that mean this is a great film? No way. Jungle Cruise isn’t bad, but its aspirations are far from lofty. The writers clearly spent most of their time trying to make things funnier and more entertaining for our leads, and not very much trying to make a plot that made a whole lot of sense. You’re telling me Dwayne Johnson has been cursed to live forever like a normal super-jacked guy as long as he lives near the river? Honestly, that doesn’t sound so bad. And why do his other cursed friends get such a short end of the stick? I get that they were trapped in vines for a few hundred years, but they look like cousins of Davy Jones’ crew – and Dwayne Johnson looks like Dwayne Johnson. That doesn’t seem fair to me.
There’s also a heavy-handed emphasis on showing how Emily Blunt’s character is capable even though she’s a woman. For the record, I loved her character. But let’s peek at another woman-led feature film this year: Black Widow. There’s a woman who kicks butt and doesn’t need anyone to say “Wow! She’s a girl and she can do cool stuff!” She just does it. There’s a bit too much pandering in this film, where characters remark on how unwomanlike Blunt is behaving. I don’t think the film would have suffered at all if the men had just shut up and let Blunt do her stuff. That said, there was a gag towards the end of the film where a character was retelling an unbelievable story to a large group of educated men. The men listened patiently until the character mentioned a tribe led by a woman, and then they all lost it. That was very funny.
James Newton Howard’s score was good enough to make me play it in my car the next day – it’s adventurous and feel-good, and it adds a lot to the film. But at the end of the day, what keeps this movie afloat is its two leads. Both Johnson and Blunt are at the top of their game right now, and each of them holds their own while having a fun chemistry together. Their somewhat inevitable romance didn’t feel as natural to me, but whenever they bickered and one-upped each other, it was great. Honestly, I wouldn’t complain if Emily Blunt made another Indiana Jones style movie.
This was the first new film that Jenna and I watched in theatres since Onward in March 2020, and it was just the popcorn flick we needed this summer. It’s not gonna go down as one of the best films of the year, but it was two hours of escapist fun. Some people might roll their eyes while on Disney’s Jungle Cruise, but if you can just embrace the silliness for a few minutes, you might just have a good time.