Jungle Cruise (2021)

 Score: 4 / 5

What an absolute delight. Jungle Cruise, Disney's latest live-action adaptation of one of its famed park attractions, will surely be compared to The Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean, and it owes a healthy amount of its silly nature and good-humored style to those previous pictures. One wonders about a future date when the already revamped Pirates ride and soon-to-be revamped Cruise -- already situated next to each other in the Magic Kingdom -- become a single thrilling tropical adventure for wide-eyed children hoping to explore a swashbuckling world of action and magic. But this new film owes as much, if not more, to the blockbuster franchises of Indiana Jones and The Mummy in content and tone.

Its slap-dash opening sequence, covering conquistadors searching the Amazon for a mythical Tree of Life, is the kind of stuff we expect to see here; thankfully, we're immediately aware that Edgar Ramirez will be playing the Big Bad, cursed for eternity to wander the shores of the river. Then we sharply cut to London just after the turn of the century, where botanist Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) is desperate to convince the male-dominated scientific community that her research on this "tree of life" is valid and should jumpstart a full-scale expedition. Using her snooty brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall) to speak for her, she sneaks away to steal an artifact she is sure will lead them to the tree and its healing flowers, known as the Tears of the Moon. It's hard not to hear Johnny Depp delivering some of these lines ("So, it's a key?" "Much more better -- this is a drawing of a key!", if you, like me, quote the magnificent Pirates movies daily). But Blunt's performative dexterity is again put to the test in a sort of Milo Thatch-meets-Jane Porter mashup of eccentric wit and adventurous fervor.

Her gumption, if not quite her wit, is matched by their guide. Upon arriving in South America, they hire their "Skipper," Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson) to propel them upriver. It is Johnson's inclusion that pushes the movie into farcical territory, but it is eminently worth it; his introduction is the film's only major reference to the theme park ride, as his job consists of taking tourists around the exotic sights of the river. Making cheesy jokes the whole time, and often staging the exciting events he narrates, he's the epitome of a well-meaning geriatric (we've come to expect this dry gruffness from Harrison Ford or Bruce Willis) in a younger, frighteningly buff body. His energy pairs well with Blunt's, even though the two never quite kindle the latent romantic energy we might expect; they're having too much fun to weigh it down with sentiment!

While the explosive action and frenetic propulsion of the movie are not indicative at all of the ride, this is the sort of delightful, escapist romp we've all craved since March 2020. There's a lot of shoehorned lore packed in here, and it's not as thoroughly developed as in Verbinski's swashbuckler, but it's a hell of a lot of fun to see it all come to life. And the casual racism of the ride is gone, too, perhaps nowhere more clearly than when the "headhunters" the heroes encounter turn out to be part of Skipper's shtick. It's hard, alas, to not let some of the more absurd elements go. Once during the screening, as the boat encountered roaring rapids before almost plunging over a waterfall, I had to choke down my indignation that the whole premise of the plot consisted of them traveling upriver. But since when has realism stopped a Disney movie from forging ahead into the thicket of wildest fantasy? From its eye-popping visuals (and beautiful CGI renderings) to its infectious joy; I lamented more than once that the film did not allow its optical grandeur to breathe and sink in. A little patience and intelligence go a long way, as we saw with Pirates, but this movie is up to a very different project.

There are a few other delightful inclusions, including the notably underused Paul Giamatti as a caricatured Italian harbor master demanding money from Skipper at every turn. Jesse Plemons pops in for a few scenes as an equally cartoonish German villain in a torpedo-laden submarine. Both are very funny, and do the movie a lot of credit. Even with that, the design of the cursed conquistadors is the stuff that fueled my childhood nightmares (and Ramirez will be much better remembered as the real villain here). With so much going on, Johnson, Blunt, and Whitehall (playing the first unequivocally gay character in a Disney feature) are obviously having the time of their careers hamming it up with each other and lead the film with great panache. Director Jaume Collet-Serra (The Shallows, and several fun if rote Liam Neeson action vehicles) smartly keeps things moving, reminding us that depth doesn't matter if the ride is fun enough. And this one certainly is.