Movie Review: 'Jungle Cruise'

Jungle Cruise is a movie that exists. I should probably end this review right there as that is the only thing that needs to be acknowledged regarding Jungle Cruise. It’s a movie that people made and now it exists within the world. There is nothing remotely special about this fact or anything remotely negative about this fact. Jungle Cruise exists within the benign, a condition of existence that is at once harmless and but not exactly pleasant.

Jungle Cruise stars future President of the United States Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson as Frank, a jungle cruise proprietor in some unnamed South American province. Frank is eventually introduced to Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) and her brother, McGregor (Jack Whitehall), who wish to employ Frank and his boat. The duo are on the trail of a mythical tree from which hangs petals that could cure all known diseases. Frank is skeptical but he needs the money to keep his boat from being taken by the greedy Nilo (Paul Giamatti), to whom he is deeply in debt.

Frank has another secret but I won’t spoil it here. He’s aware of the special tree that Lily and McGregor are searching for but has given up on it actually existing. That is until he sees Lily’s necklace, an arrowhead on which a key is written that may unlock the secret to the tree’s location. Chasing after our heroes is the evil Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons), the overprivileged son of German royalty. He wants the tree and its magic in order to win World War 1 for Germany.

Along the way we are also introduced to Aguirre (Edgar Ramirez). Aguirre searched for the tree some 400 years earlier and ended up being cursed for his violent attempt to acquire the petals of the tree. The curse has Aguirre trapped in a cave in a perpetual nightmare state. He is freed from his captivity, along with a few of his loyal soldiers by Prince Joachim and we learn that his curse could be lifted if he were to get to the tree.

And that’s it, that’s the spoiler free plot of Jungle Cruise. If it sounds like a description of half a dozen other similar outsized fantasy movies, it’s supposed to. Familiarity is intended as a virtue to cover up how barren the origin of the movie is. The film is loosely based on one of Disney’s attractions, literally called the Jungle Cruise. I don’t know if anything from this story reflects any actual lore from the ride but I also don’t believe that matters.

Jungle Cruise was directed by Jaume Collet Serra with admirable competence. Nothing stands out as actively bad, aside from the CGI Jaguar pet belonging to Frank, but again, who cares. Serra’s job is to translate the familiar script and likable stars onto the screen with as much competence as he can muster and every bit of that competence is on display. There is nothing remotely spectacular about Jungle Cruise and nothing offensive about it.

Oh but what about the stars? Aren’t The Rock and Emily Blunt great? They’re fine. Both are movie stars and they both perform the function of movie stars but there is an emptiness to everything about Jungle Cruise that dims the star power a little. Unlike Johnny Depp in the very similar Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Blunt and Johnson aren’t actors who draw in the margins or make fun where none existed before. This isn’t a criticism and I am not saying Johnny Depp is better or worse than either Blunt or Johnson.

Rather, Johnny Depp has a particular skill for doing his own thing that disrupted the very nature of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. He is an out of control element brought under control by editing and direction that forced his strangeness into coherence while still letting the madness seep in. For all of the talent of Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, they are not actors who draw outside the lines. They are happy to provide what is asked of them and that’s what they give to Jungle Cruise, exactly the competent, moderately amusing performances they were asked to perform.

Do I recommend Jungle Cruise? Not really, there is nothing much to recommend. It’s a movie that exists. If you want two plus hours of distraction with pleasant actors enacting something that resembles a competent form of entertainment, you can do better. There are movies out there that do more than competently exist. But, I guess if you don’t want to think and you just want to watch these stars, you could still do better but you could also do far worse.