Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours, 7 minutes
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Quick Impressions:
We were in Disneyland the Saturday Jungle Cruise premiered there. As we entered the park, cast members gave us each a little gift bag containing a souvenir button and some brownie M&Ms. (I don’t know what I’ve done with the buttons. They would have gone right on my jean jacket when I was a kid, but I don’t know what I’ve done with that either. The children ate all the M&Ms.)
As we finished riding It’s a Small World, we peered over to see the red carpet already set up near the entrance to Toon Town. Our eighteen-year-old son was extremely excited. “When does the premiere start?” he asked.
“Probably not until tonight,” my husband advised. “They cancelled the fireworks.”
“I want to see the Rock,” our son said.
“I don’t know if we can stay that late,” my husband lied to himself (because we always stay that late, no matter what he says). “And it might be a private event.”
We didn’t know how the premiere worked. No one had explained it, which made it seem like regular park visitors wouldn’t be permitted to hang around in that area. Then again, they had drawn our attention to it by handing out buttons.
To me that suggested a clear plan of action. Spend the evening in New Orleans Square and see how many times we could ride Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion over and over again while nobody was paying attention to that part of the park. (Granted, this is always my plan, no matter what’s going on because if anything at all is going on, you can usually ride Pirates and Haunted Mansion eight hundred times in a row before anyone notices or cares.) Despite my husband’s desire to leave early (since it was our last day), my daughter and I attempted to execute this scheme, and it was working beautifully until the ride broke down for several minutes just as we had drifted by the Blue Bayou.
So we didn’t go to the Jungle Cruise premiere. (I’m pretty sure we weren’t invited.) But we did watch the movie on Disney + once we finally got home (which took a little longer than expected). (We weren’t even supposed to be in Disneyland at all, but Lake Tahoe was on fire, there was plague in Colorado, and I was making helpful decisions like, “We’ll just go meet my friends for lunch in LA and then stay there forever.”) (Honestly, we all just love Disneyland, and my six-year-old kept getting both carsick and sick of the car, making our original plan of a neverending scenic drive foolhardy to continue.)
But we arrived home excited to see Jungle Cruise.
The Good:
I was always excited to see Jungle Cruise. I don’t know why because I didn’t think it looked good necessarily. In fact, I expected it to be bad, based mostly on the premise that when it comes to ride-based Disney movies, the first Pirates of the Caribbean is excellent, and then…
Also when I first heard about the movie, it sort of seemed like Emily Blunt was only doing it because she wanted to be Mary Poppins (which is a very valid reason). And the Rock is plugged into every single movie like this lately. If there’s an adventure in the jungle, he’s there. (Now, granted, when they stick him at random into an existing franchise, it’s almost always an improvement, and audiences clearly do want to see him, including us, especially our eighteen-year-old.)
But I thought the early trailers for Jungle Cruise (which I’m sure I first saw millions of years ago) made the movie look like something I might enjoy watching (or at least would want to see, whether I liked it or not). I was most intrigued by two things.
1) The trailer made it look like a cross between The African Queen and The Mummy (and it is like that, just like that). This seemed like a good idea to me because the ride was originally inspired (at least in part) by The African Queen. And Jungle Cruise actually leans into this quite a bit, naming the female protagonist Lily Houghton. (Katharine Houghton Hepburn not only starred in The African Queen but has a famous, oft-mocked line about calla lilies. Also she wore pants all the time. And she starred in Bringing Up Baby, too, with a giant leopard. This movie clearly tries to make us remember even that at random, odd moments.) It’s replete with echoes of other movies. Did you like it when The Mummy reminded you of Indiana Jones movies or when Indiana Jones movies reminded you of Casablanca? Good news! The Jungle Cruise will remind you of all of that yet again! And it will remind you of a bunch of other movies, too. And, it will remind you of Disneyland.
2) And that’s the thing. If there’s a movie about a Disney ride, and the movie is successful, then they’ll probably change the ride. (I wish Tomorrowland had been more successful because they really need to fix Tomorrowland.) But my point is, if you like Disney rides, you’ll want to see the movie, so you can guess what’s going to happen to your favorite attractions. We didn’t get a chance to ride The Jungle Cruise this time, but when last I checked, the Disneyland and Disney World versions of the ride diverged quite a bit. Both of them get criticized for having elements that seem potentially racist, though. Watching this movie, I thought, “Okay, they actually need to revamp the Indiana Jones ride, too.” (By the way, my six-year-old got to ride that, and he was definitely an inch too short, as we realized after we’d been in line for several minutes and thought to double check the height requirement online. It was dark, and nobody asked us at the start of the line, so we kept preparing him that he might not get to ride. But for some reason, he did!) Temple of the Forbidden Eye is fine as is, but they could easily give it a Jungle Cruise retheming now. If I were an Imagineer, I’d have the attraction start on the boat and end in the temple. (I’m sure they won’t do that because it would mess up the lines and just be a nightmare of height requirements and crowd flow. But I would do it.) (That’s why I’m not in charge of anything.)
So I went into this movie curious but with expectations that would have been satisfied by any result. Any version of this movie that gave me the Rock and Emily Blunt on a Jungle Cruise boat with action scenes that could one day become a ride would have been fine with me. To my delight, the movie exceeded my expectations (which were low, but that wasn’t the movie’s fault).
Jungle Cruise is very entertaining. For one thing, it’s funny (enough). As anyone who has ridden the classic attraction knows, the Jungle Cruise’s actual humor depends on how good the skipper is, how well he or she delivers the corny jokes. Another thing that makes a difference sometimes is the mood of the people on the boat with you, their willingness to play along. My family were favorably disposed to the movie, and Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson actually were funny. My daughter thinks their romance doesn’t work. (I’m not sure that I agree.) But their comedic chemistry does work, and that’s (far) more important in a movie like this.
I especially liked Emily Blunt, but that is not surprising at all since I always like her. I especially like her when she’s speaking in her own accent and trying to be funny (because when she tries to be funny, she is funny. I loved her in The Devil Wears Prada). She’s very funny and likeable here. She makes lines and situations funnier than they would otherwise be through her delivery. And many moments seem at least partially ad-libbed. Plus even though her character is like every female adventurer ever, when we watched, our general reaction was, “Yeah!!! Go female adventurer character!” She’s very fun to watch. (As soon as I saw her obvious scheme in the beginning, I was delighted. It’s very predictable but welcome. I love it when people go sneaking around getting up to mischief. And in this early part of the movie, there’s a reference to Shaka Zulu. I feel personally obligated to take note of him every time he comes up in pop culture. And I was thrilled at another early moment when Lily tells Frank to follow her even though she has absolutely no idea what’s going on or where’s she’s going.)
Dwayne Johnson is good, too. He’s always perfect in roles like this. It feels like they’re just written for him, or that maybe they’re not written at all. Maybe that’s why they cast him. There’s no part, so he just acts like himself and makes it work. (I’m sure that’s not what’s going on. I was surprised to discover that one writer of the screenplay is Michael Green, who seemed to write every hit movie I saw in 2017.)
The supporting cast is good, too. My daughter and I were particularly taken with Veronica Falcón as Trader Sam. It’s easy to watch cynically and say, “Well, clearly they’re trying to clean up parts of the ride that people complain are one-dimensionally racist and offensive by making Trader Sam an appealing female character.” The thing is, it’s working pretty well. The character is interesting now, and the actress is funny.
Edgar Ramírez makes a captivating (if unusual) villain, and Jack Whitehall is highly watchable as Lily’s brother MacGregor. The character is noteworthy because he pretty much tells us that he’s gay, and that’s still not too common in a Disney movie. Lately all kinds of Disney characters allude to all kinds of things, but he’s much more direct and difficult to misunderstand.
For some reason, Jesse Plemons is pursuing everyone in a submarine. I’m not sure that makes sense. But I’m including it in the positive part of this review because joking about the unrealistic nature of his character’s behavior was a highlight of the movie for us. In this film, every protagonist has an enemy. Frank’s being chased by someone. Lily’s being chased by someone. MacGregor has a whole society annoyed with him. Jungle Cruise has so many villains, and yet in the end, the only real villain is death (which comes for us all). The movie also has a welcome element of magic. I think introducing a supernatural element to the ride would be a good idea. Well, it would be an idea, anyway. With the wrong skipper, the Jungle Cruise can be very stale. (I inordinately love the Weird Al song “Skipper Dan.” I love it more than anyone I know. I can’t explain quite why I like it so much, but I find it so funny.)
Best Scene:
Well, it’s not the best scene, but the prolonged moment when Lily is pulling something out of Frank eventually won me over. At first, I thought it was just inserting double-entendre into a Disney movie for no reason. It seemed out of place. But then it just went on and on and became so silly that I started to like it a lot (sort of like Sideshow Bob stepping on the rakes).
Best Scene Visually:
I like the flashback when we learn Frank’s true story. I’d almost prefer the movie have more of this at the expense of the Jesse Plemons character. I get the sense the film is making some deep point about the nature of villains and commenting on who is actually a threat. But with a compelling, supernatural story like Jungle Cruise teases us with in the beginning, why even include Prince Joachim? (Admittedly, he does some important things.) It’s a cool idea to have something so dark and intense wrapped up in the origin story of a Jungle Cruise skipper, known for corny jokes and terrible tours.
Best Action Sequence:
I love the moment when Lily tells Frank to follow her. Why does she think she knows where to go? The moment when Aguirre reappears brings some welcome intensity to the story, too. I think Trader Sam’s portion of the story might be my favorite part.
The Negatives:
My twelve-year-old daughter could not stand the romance in this movie. She felt it was forced, that it did not work for her. Before I explain why, in a spirit of fairness, I’ll note that she never likes the romance in any movie. To my recollection, the only movie romance that actually has completely, 100 percent worked for her was the relationship between Jack and David in Wings (still her favorite Best Picture winner) which she chooses to read as romance.
Relating her exact complaint would require major plot spoilers. So I’ll say this. According to my daughter, Frank “knows what it is to lose people.” Because he’s aware that Lily could lose him, “it is selfish of him to show her he loves her.”
“Maybe he wants her to save him,” I suggested.
“That is also selfish of him,” she said, “because it is not her job to save him. And based on the things he’s experienced in his life, he shouldn’t be willing to make her suffer like that. If he loved her, he should have kept quiet, and he easily could have.”
From my point of view, this does not prove that Frank doesn’t love Lily, merely that he becomes slightly selfish when contemplating the permanence of his own death. Seen from another viewpoint, no, it is not her job to save him, but it might be her pleasure to save him. By making his feelings known, Frank gives her the opportunity to decide for herself what she wants and make this known to him also.
My daughter went on, “It seems like impractical behavior, inconsistent with his character that if he does indeed love her like he says, he would want to leave her so hurt.”
This attitude bodes well for her future dating choices (at least from the point of view of a parent who doesn’t want her to get hurt), but I think she has a blind spot when it comes to movie romances. From my own point of view, impractical behavior is inconsistent with neither Frank’s character nor being in love. Frank cooks up half-baked schemes all the time, and, if anything, being in love would likely make him more impractical (as it does most people).
What Frank does that starts all of the conflict with the antagonist in the first place is not a practical thing. That choice comes from strong emotion being overridden by stronger emotion in an intense moment. It is neither logical nor practical. And in Frank’s defense, if I had feelings for someone who also had feelings for me, I’d prefer to know that in time to make my plans accordingly (especially if it were life or death). Maybe their romance is doomed, but what if all of Lily’s other romances don’t work out either? At least she’ll be able to look back and sigh, “Frank went to his horrible, grisly death loving me!”
Of course, for me, the effectiveness of the romance in this movie doesn’t even matter. It’s not like I went in, thinking, “As God is my witness, this romance had better work for me! If I can’t learn about love from Jungle Cruise, what hope is there for me in this life? I’m going to quit watching Disneyland attraction based movies if this one doesn’t provide me with a romance that will teach my heart to love again!” I mean who cares if the romance works? Basically, the Rock is in the movie so people will go, and Emily Blunt wanted to play Mary Poppins. And now they’re on a boat! That’s good enough for me.
They do have decent screen chemistry, I think. Their jokes are sometimes funnier than I expected. I’m not sure if they seem like they’re in love. But consider how unusual his situation is. She finds out and five minutes later seems okay with it. There’s not time in this movie for a realistic romance.
Of course, maybe there would be time if the film didn’t cram in so many villains. My daughter astutely pointed out that the Jesse Plemons character is just a decoy villain. He’s not the villain at all.
“Could it be,” she said to me with played up excitement, “that this movie has our favorite villain of all? Society!” (That’s very fitting for the ride. Civilization is the real villain.) I’m not sure that I exactly love Jesse Plemons in this movie. He can be a really good actor, and it’s not his fault this character annoys me. I think the whole character is so strange that I’m not sure anybody could play him in a way that made any sense. He’s meant to be cartoonish, and he’s far more menacing in his own mind than he is to anyone else. (The way he just keeps showing up everywhere at the perfect moment reminds me of the degree of reality you’d get from an episode of Saved By the Bell.) Then again, our hero is a Jungle Cruise skipper.
But Edgar Ramírez plays a different kind of villain. He’s so tortured. I think he’s much more promising as a villain, and I like the magical elements of the story. Unfortunately, the movie kind of wastes all this. His storyline gets really rushed. If I had a character like him, I’d give him a more central place in the story (like Barbossa and the other cursed pirates).
But what really bothers me is the ending. It makes no sense to me at all. (Well, I like the very end when they dress up like Willy Wonka and pretend they’re in Bringing Up Baby just because it’s so pointlessly zany.) But look at what Aguirre did. I’ll explain in vague terms. He was selfish (from a certain point of view), but he was selfish for a good reason. He needed something (to help someone he loved, someone in desperate need). So for the entirety of the movie, Lily has been desperately eager to help all mankind. Then at the end, she’s like, “Just kidding.” (What makes her different from Aguirre then?) And what she does works. Why does it work? The resolution is just too convenient and morally slippery at best—unless the point is there are no villains. But still, why does that work?
Overall:
Jungle Cruise is fun to watch. Instead of trying to be unlike every jungle movie you’ve ever seen, it instead tries to be just like every jungle movie you’ve ever seen. It’s hard not to like a movie that keeps reminding you of other fun movies and seems to have such a good sense of humor about itself. You don’t even need to buy a ticket to watch it. You can pay to see it on Disney+. If they make a sequel, I will watch that, too, as long as it begins immediately where the movie leaves off and imitates every screwball comedy. I’d love to see a Bringing Up Baby ride at Disneyland. (Actually, I’d love to see any ride at Disneyland. I want to go back to Disneyland.)