Jungle Cruise (2021)

Jungle Cruise (2021) 🚢🐒

Really digging the bottom of the barrel with this one

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🎬 Let’s start by showing y’all the trailer shall we?

Back in 2021 Disney once again looked around their theme parks and apparently said:

“Well, Pirates of the Caribbean worked.”

Then somebody probably looked over at Jungle Cruise and said:

“Let’s do that again.”

And thus Jungle Cruise was born.

A movie based on a ride where a boat captain tells bad jokes while floating past animatronic animals.

Now unlike The Haunted Mansion, I never really understood the demand for this one.

I don’t remember people constantly asking for a Jungle Cruise movie.

I don’t remember fans begging Disney to expand the lore.

I don’t remember anybody sitting around wondering what the deep mythology behind the ride was.

Yet somehow this movie got made.

And after watching it my biggest reaction was:

“Yeah… okay.”

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Non-Spoiler Thoughts

I don’t hate this movie.

I don’t love this movie.

I kind of just… watched it.

Then it ended.

And that’s probably the biggest problem.

For a movie filled with giant action scenes, cursed conquistadors, magical trees, supernatural powers, jungle monsters, treasure hunts, and Dwayne Johnson fighting people every fifteen minutes, it somehow feels weirdly forgettable.

The movie is constantly moving.

Something is always happening.

Yet very little of it sticks with me.

Compare that to Pirates of the Caribbean.

I can instantly remember Jack Sparrow.

Barbossa.

The Black Pearl.

The cursed pirates.

The music.

The opening scene.

The moonlight skeleton reveal.

Meanwhile when I think about Jungle Cruise my brain mostly goes:

“Oh yeah, The Rock was there.”

That’s not exactly a great sign.

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Dwayne Johnson

This feels like one of the most Dwayne Johnson performances ever created.

He’s charming.

He’s likable.

He’s funny enough.

But he’s also basically playing Dwayne Johnson again.

Frank Wolff is essentially what happens if you put The Rock onto a boat and told him to make jungle puns for two hours.

Now to be fair, he’s not bad.

Actually, he’s probably one of the better parts of the movie.

His chemistry with Emily Blunt carries a huge chunk of the film.

Without that chemistry I think this movie would’ve completely fallen apart.

But at the same time, I never really stopped seeing Dwayne Johnson.

I wasn’t watching Frank.

I was watching The Rock wearing a captain’s outfit.

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Emily Blunt

Emily Blunt honestly ended up being my favorite part of the movie.

She’s energetic.

She’s entertaining.

She actually feels invested in the adventure.

Her character has a clear goal and spends the entire movie pushing the story forward.

A lot of times it feels like she’s carrying the actual plot while everyone else gets distracted.

Her back-and-forth with Johnson creates some genuinely fun moments and keeps the movie from becoming completely forgettable.

Without her, I think the movie would’ve struggled significantly more than it already does.

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Surprisingly Creepy

One thing I was not expecting was how creepy parts of this movie get.

Seriously.

For a Disney movie based on a boat ride, there are moments that feel way darker than they have any right to be.

The cursed conquistadors are nightmare fuel compared to what I expected going in.

These aren’t just generic bad guys.

They’re essentially supernatural monsters trapped between life and death.

Covered in vines.

Bees.

Snakes.

Jungle growth.

Rotting flesh.

Walking around looking like somebody dumped a fantasy horror movie into a family adventure film.

There were several moments where I found myself thinking:

“Disney really approved this?”

Not horror movie scary.

But definitely creepier than I expected from Jungle Cruise.

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The Villains

Honestly, this is where the movie starts getting messy.

The film has way too many villains.

You’ve got the cursed conquistadors.

You’ve got Prince Joachim.

You’ve got various henchmen.

Everybody wants the magical tree.

Everybody is chasing everybody else.

And eventually the movie starts feeling overcrowded.

Instead of having one memorable villain, the movie gives us multiple villains that kind of blend together.

The conquistadors at least look cool.

I’ll give them that.

But beyond their visual design, I never found them particularly memorable.

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The Plot

This is where the movie completely loses me.

Because the deeper we get into the story, the more it starts feeling like Disney desperately wanted another Pirates of the Caribbean.

We’ve got ancient curses.

Immortality.

Lost legends.

Treasure hunts.

Supernatural villains.

Big action sequences.

Ancient artifacts.

Mystical powers.

At a certain point it stops feeling like Jungle Cruise and starts feeling like Disney trying to recreate a formula.

The problem is that Pirates happened naturally.

This feels manufactured.

Like somebody sat in a boardroom and tried to reverse engineer another franchise.

The weird thing is that the story itself isn’t terrible.

It’s just never interesting enough to justify how long it is.

By the end I found myself less interested in what was happening and more interested in when the movie would finally wrap up.

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The Visual Effects

The visual effects are a mixed bag.

Some shots look fantastic.

The jungle environments can be beautiful.

Some creature effects look great.

The supernatural sequences occasionally impress.

Other times the movie looks like it was filmed entirely inside a computer.

And unfortunately those moments become more noticeable as the film progresses.

There were multiple action scenes where I stopped paying attention because everything on screen looked artificial.

When a movie relies this heavily on spectacle, that’s a problem.

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What Works

Emily Blunt is excellent.

Dwayne Johnson is naturally charismatic.

The cursed conquistadors have cool designs.

Some genuinely creepy moments caught me off guard.

The adventure tone is fun at times.

The chemistry between the leads works.

The production values are impressive.

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What Doesn’t Work

The movie is way too long.

The plot becomes increasingly bloated.

The villains aren’t particularly memorable.

A lot of the action scenes blend together.

The visual effects can feel overly artificial.

It constantly lives in the shadow of Pirates of the Caribbean.

And honestly, I don’t think many people are going to remember this movie years from now.

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Final Thoughts

I think my biggest issue with Jungle Cruise is that it feels manufactured.

Not bad.

Manufactured.

It feels like Disney looked at everything that worked in Pirates of the Caribbean and tried building another franchise out of a different ride.

Sometimes it works.

Sometimes it’s fun.

Sometimes the creepy cursed conquistadors genuinely make things interesting.

But at the end of the day, I just don’t think there’s enough here to make the movie memorable.

When I think about Disney ride adaptations, I think about Pirates.

I think about The Haunted Mansion.

I even think about Eddie Murphy getting chased around by ghosts.

I rarely think about Jungle Cruise.

And I think that’s the movie’s biggest problem.

It’s not terrible.

It’s just forgettable.

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Rating

5/10

A perfectly watchable adventure movie with some surprisingly creepy visuals and good chemistry between its leads, but one that ultimately feels like Disney trying to recreate Pirates of the Caribbean without capturing what made that movie special.

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⚠️ SPOILER WARNING ⚠️

Everything beyond this point contains spoilers for Jungle Cruise (2021).

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Spoilers

The biggest surprise in the movie is definitely Frank’s reveal.

Finding out that Dwayne Johnson’s character is actually hundreds of years old and tied directly to the conquistador storyline was not something I saw coming.

It’s not a bad twist.

Honestly, it’s probably the most interesting thing the movie does.

The problem is that the reveal arrives so late that it feels like the movie suddenly changes genres halfway through.

What started as a jungle adventure turns into a supernatural immortality story.

Then there’s the Tree of Life.

The entire movie is built around finding this magical tree that can supposedly heal anything.

Which is fine.

Classic adventure movie stuff.

But by the time we finally reach it, I wasn’t nearly as invested as the movie wanted me to be.

Part of that comes from the fact that the journey itself wasn’t compelling enough.

The destination is supposed to feel epic.

Instead I was mostly thinking:

“Okay, we’ve finally arrived.”

The conquistadors remain the highlight of the movie for me.

Their designs are genuinely cool.

The bee guy is creepy.

The snake guy is creepy.

The vine-covered bodies look disturbing.

For a Disney movie, they really pushed the visuals further than I expected.

Honestly, they felt like villains from a darker fantasy movie that wandered into Jungle Cruise by accident.

The ending also suffers from the same problem as much of the movie.

It’s big.

It’s loud.

It’s expensive.

And yet it doesn’t leave much of an impact.

Characters sacrifice themselves.

Magic happens.

The curse is broken.

People are saved.

Everything wraps up neatly.

And then the credits roll.

I wasn’t angry.

I wasn’t excited.

I just kind of sat there thinking:

“Well, that was certainly a movie.”

And honestly, that’s probably the best way I can summarize Jungle Cruise.

It’s not bad.

It’s not great.

It’s occasionally fun.

It’s occasionally creepy.

But years from now when people talk about Disney ride movies, I have a feeling most people will still be talking about Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion.

Meanwhile Jungle Cruise will mostly be remembered as that movie where Disney put The Rock on a boat and hoped lightning would strike twice.