Lost in the Amazon

The best parts of Jungle Cruise pay homage to the venerable theme park attraction of the same name: beautiful scenery, dated special effects, and a steady stream of corny jokes. But the ride gets a little bumpy when Disney tries to upgrade the easygoing adventure into a spectacular summer blockbuster that checks the boxes of its social agenda.

The film begins at a fictional version of London’s Royal Society where MacGregor Houghton (Jack Whitehall) attempts to enlist the society’s aid for his scientist sister’s expedition to the Amazon. The society has no time for Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) because she’s a woman, so she steals what she needs from the society’s archives before heading to South America. Lily, with MacGregor in tow, seeks a legendary tree with petals called “the tears of the moon” that supposedly cure all diseases.

Lily hires skipper Frank Wolff (Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson) to give her passage up the Amazon River. Frank usually entertains tourists with manufactured adventure and bad puns, but he’s the right guy to help Lily navigate the dangers of the rainforest.

Apparently those dangers weren’t exciting enough for a jungle cruise, so the writers have evil Prince Joachim of Germany (Jesse Plemons) use a submarine to pursue our intrepid explorers. Joachim wants the tears of the moon to help Germany win World War I and achieve global domination.

Evil Germans chasing the heroes through a deadly rainforest also might not be exciting enough, so the writers added 400-year-old conquistador zombies who chase everyone.

Jungle Cruise starts out strong—like a glitzy theme-park version of Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn’s The African Queen. For the first half of this adventurous scientific expedition, Blunt and Johnson play off each other well: Lily wants to stay focused on her mission, and Frank wants to have a little fun while dissuading her. MacGregor supplies an extra dose of comedy as the fastidious sidekick.

But the film loses its way with its turn to the fantastic. Why did Disney decide to break out the Pirates of the Caribbean playbook with curses and zombies? Their arrival sucks all the fun out of Lily and Frank’s relationship. The search for the tears of the moon also becomes ridiculous. Everything depends on magic, and the movie’s climax hinges on impossibly coincidental timing.

Once again Disney panders to progressives, but not to the point of hurting its profits. The filmmakers want us to view Lily as a hero of feminine liberation: She goes where men are unwilling to go and wears pants in 1916. But of course, Lily falls in love with grungy Frank, which doesn’t do much for the liberation narrative.

Meanwhile MacGregor reveals he’s gay halfway through the movie, allowing Disney to claim some LGBT representation in its films. But even when he’s “coming out” he never actually says he’s gay. He talks around the subject so adults will get the hint, but many children won’t understand.

Disney also has trouble depicting indigenous peoples, something the original ride received criticism for. The movie can’t quite decide if it wants to revere or ridicule the Amazonian natives.

Jungle Cruise gets its PG-13 rating for its action sequences (on a large enough scale to distract you from the movie’s nonsensical second half), and the gruesome zombies will probably be too scary for small children. But most of the objectionable content is implicit (such as MacGregor’s hinted-at homosexuality). The language is relatively clean compared with most PG-13 movies. There’s one implied expletive, and Prince Joachim utters a foul word in German.

The movie is diverting enough summer fare, especially for fans of Johnson and Blunt, but I don’t expect many people will be excited enough to queue up for a second ride.