Direction: Jaume Collet-Serra
Country: USA
Based on Disney’s riverboat amusing ride, Jaume Collet-Serra’s Jungle Cruise is a tiresome effects-soaked extravaganza with shallow characters and uninterrupted ostentatious sequences. The plot, written by regular associates Glenn Ficarra/John Requa (I Love You Phillip Morris, 2009; Focus, 2015) together with Michael Green (Logan, 2017; Blade Runner 2049, 2017), contains plenty of incidents that never materialize quite right on the screen.
It all starts when a courageous and charming British researcher, Dr. Lili Houghton (Emily Blunt), decides to cross the aggressive Brazilian Amazon rainforest by boat in search for the mythical Tree of Life on account of its healing powers. Her secret is that she can’t swim, an extra motive to hire the experienced boat skipper Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson), who is far more secretive than her but knows the jungle as the palm of his hand. Whereas she can be described as a female version of Indiana Jones, he resembles a raucous Popeye with no need for spinach.
Fancily decorated, the film also evokes Pirates of the Caribbean, Goonies and Aguirre (just a little due to the presence of the Spanish conquistador), but ends in a cluttered mess devoid of magic, where every attempted thrill becomes ineffective. With the director botching the scenes with suffocatingly busy scenarios, I had two hours of little fun. It feels that he and the screenwriters were so obsessed with the visuals that they simply forgot the human emotions. This adventure has no soul.
