Nevertheless, it’s still impossible to watch Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) and Captain Frank “Skipper” Wolff (Dwayne Johnson) navigate the jungle waters on the latter’s rickety steamboat without thinking of “The African Queen,” even if these characters subvert the archetypes that John Huston’s movie left behind in its wake: She’s a fearless adventurer instead of a nervous missionary, and he’s a ridiculously swole punster who wouldn’t hurt a fly (but still dresses the part of a rough-and-ready loner). If “Jungle Cruise” runs out of gas around the halfway point of its bloated 127-minute runtime, watching a man formerly known as “The Rock” stuff himself into Humphrey Bogart’s old costume — down to that perfect little porkpie hat — never gets old; imagine squeezing the cargo of the Titanic aboard the Staten Island Ferry and you’ll have the right idea.
The best thing that can be said about McGregor is that his Exclusively Gay Moment™ isn’t as vague or tacked on as the ones that Disney has hyped in the past; whatever issue viewers take with the casting of a straight actor in a stereotypical gay role, at least Michael Green, Glenn Ficarra, and John Requa’s script centers McGregor’s ostracization from polite society, and celebrates Frank and Lily for accepting him all the same. If that sounds like a case of lowering the bar to the point that critics will champion even a scintilla of humanity, welcome to Disney’s 21st century film output, I have some Rotten Tomatoes scores to explain to you. Frank gets a similar pass for being a lot more fun than many of the characters that Johnson has played over recent years. Cleverly introduced leading tourists on a jungle cruise that he’s rigged to feel like a theme park ride (complete with rigged pop-outs, costumed natives, and “the backside of water”), Frank exists at the softly indomitable sweet spot of Johnson’s screen persona. He’s invincible, but perhaps too independent for his own good, and it’s hard to write off any movie where Johnson argues with a ruthless Italian harbormaster played by a mustache-twirling Paul Giamatti (with a toucan on his shoulder!) and suplexes a drunken leopard in the span of five minutes. The manufactured chemistry between Johnson and Blunt — he calls her “Pants,” she calls him “Skippy” — is a mile wide and an inch deep, but a major plot twist at the halfway point of this story complicates their relationship in rewarding new ways. Collet-Serra peppers the movie with small grace notes that remind you of the “Non-Stop” director’s ability to elevate C-grade material into more rarefied air.
“Jungle Cruise” strains for authenticity in other arenas instead, particularly when it comes to humanizing the indigenous tribes so often demonized on screen (a mixed bag that softens certain stereotypes but stops short of undoing them) and letting Aguirre’s Captain Barbossa-like crew of undead conquistadors speak in their native Spanish (unsubtitled even during the longest stretches of dialogue). It’s a shame that both of these groups feel shoehorned into a story that already has an overabundance of supporting friends and dastardly villains. Even a pivotal character like Aguirre proves little more than a distraction from the bad guy that paying audiences deserve: Megalomaniacal Jesse Plemons rocking a purple velvet suit and a prop cane while eating peas from the backside of a fork. The problem with any movie in which Plemons has a heated argument with a bee is that every other scene has to compete with that, and none of the ones in “Jungle Cruise” are able to come even close.
Grade: C
Disney will release “Jungle Cruise” in theaters and on Disney+ with Premier Access on Friday, July 30. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
