Jungle Cruise

This review may contain spoilers!

 

Jungle Cruise follows Dr. Lily Houghton in her search for a fabled Amazonian tree that holds great potential for the future of medicine. Accompanied by her brother, MacGregor, and shady skipper, Frank, this journey down the Amazon is fraught with mystery and peril galore. When I started watching this film my mind was immediately cast back to classic adventure films like The Mummy (1999); these high stakes action beats blended with an intriguing setting and a cast that perfectly gels together. Seeing Lily face extreme adversity in her profession while also overcoming staggering physical obstacles makes for an impressive lead. Pair her against a con artist like Frank, who is very experienced and capable but absolutely difficult to trust and you have a brilliant leading duo. Seeing these two learn to steadily work together and depend upon one another is really the heart of the film and the strength of the feature. But Jungle Cruise delivers in so many other ways; the strong comedic presence felt throughout, the unique setting of the Amazon tourist town or just the variety of dangers our heroes face along the way. The cinematography is great and makes full use of the large set pieces, setting is key ina feature like this and how it is captured here is brilliant. The score for the feature really propels the action, it is light and charming but slips into a more frantic pace for those moments of peril.

 

Dwayne Johnson, who played Frank Wolff, makes for a fun leading character; Johnson gets to play up as more of a con artist scoundrel here which I found pretty entertaining. Emily Blunt, who played Lily Houghton, is absolutely fantastic as the strong leading protagonist of the feature; Blunt has this intensity and determination in her delivery that makes her role one that you know will not quit. Jesse Plemons, who played Prince Joachim, seems to be having the time of his life as the best villain in the feature; Plemons brings both a wicked sense of glee and a cunning to this character that makes his role one to reckon with. Paul Giamatti, who played Nilo, is genuinely brilliant fun to watch as the tourist trade mogul trying to edge Johnson's character out; Giamatti plays up the cowardice and arrogance of his role for maximum comedic effect.

However, the best performance came from Jack Whitehall, who played MacGregor Houghton. This role was the height of comedic potential for the film and entirely outshone his classmates in multiple scenes. Watching Whitehall's role in this film made me think of John Hannah's brilliant work as Jonathan in The Mummy; both roles are extremely grounded in high society and adverse to the perilous environs they find themselves within. Seeing MacGregor turn his nose up at the state of their living or haggle with Johnson's Frank about the future of his copious luggage makes for a side-splitting role. Whitehall forges a great bond with Blunt onscreen and I loved his heartfelt delivery about where his character's loyalty comes from. Whitehall wasn't why I watched Jungle Cruise but he's certainly the reason I'd watch it again.

There were two action blockbusters I thought of when I watched this film; the brilliance of The Mummy and bad qualities of the later Pirates Of The Caribbean films. Something I always found with the Pirates Of The Caribbean is that the supernatural elements got extremely convoluted in the later sequels and Jungle Cruise falls into the same trap. Inevitably this film throws us a supernatural twist and it takes a long time to solidly explain things and incorporate it into the status quo of the film. The film also struggles between deciding who it wants to be the main antagonist; a vaguely Nazi-like individual or a supernatural threat. Not enough screen time is really dedicated to either to affirm one clear central villain and the ending suffers for this somewhat. The special effects that are used to construct said antagonists does not look great either; there are a number of nice special effects in the film but these are so glaringly bad that it is worth mentioning. 

Edgar Ramirez, who played Aguirre, is wasted as the special effects-based antagonist of the feature; the constraints of limited screen time and the visual effects medium make this a character who is hard to engage with. Veronica Falcón, who played Trader Sam, is a side character who gets lost pretty easily amongst the main ensemble; Falcón's character is a member of the business savvy native people and it feels like a strange gimmick that needed more work at the script level.

An absolutely wonderful adventure blockbuster that is only ever really let down by its supernatural elements. I would give Jungle Cruise a 7.5/10.