The story is simple. Victorian adventurer Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) has a map which reveals the location of a tree with miraculous healing powers at the heart of the Amazon. Being a woman and by definition – this being the Victorian era – incapable, no one will take her seriously. In the end she and her Bertie Woosterish brother McGregor (Jack Whitehall) mount their own expedition after she steals the artefact which provides the vital clue.
They travel to the Amazon, charter a boat from roguish skipper Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson), and – pursued by sundry villains – the adventure begins.
As I said it makes no secret of its influences. It’s a little bit Pirates of the Caribbean – from memory the adjacent ride on the Disneyworld lot – a little bit Indiana Jones, and a little bit Brendan Fraser vintage Mummy.
I mean no offence to the filmmakers, but you would have to be born yesterday not to know how this is all going to play out. The trick is to use these influences to inform the story and not inhibit it. If the audience knows what’s coming next then use that to surprise them, and if you can’t surprise them with narrative then dazzle them with spectacle. Jungle Cruise is a big expensive movie, but every penny is up there on screen.
In terms of what has gone before, those of us old enough to remember may recognise John Huston’s The African Queen (1951) as the fons et origo of this kind of story. In Huston’s movie Katharine Hepburn was the strait-laced missionary who persuades grizzled riverboat captain Humphrey Bogart to help her on a wartime mission.
For Bogie and Hepburn read Johnson and Blunt who, given that no one could surpass those two Hollywood icons, do a very good job of establishing a credible on-screen relationship. The chemistry between these two is not only surprising but palpable and livens the film’s relatively few quiet moments.
Obviously, the actors play their part, but credit too must go to director Jaume Collet-Serra. Personally, I have always thought him a hugely undervalued director – Unknown (2011) and The Shallows (2016) are among the best thrillers of the past twenty years for me. Given the budget, the scale, and the stars, he has done a bang-up job not just in the action scenes, which was not in doubt, but in the quieter moments too.
The film’s weak point for me is in the villains; there’s one too many. Zombie conquistador Aguirre (Edgar Ramirez) is a decent bad guy in the Geoffrey Rush/Bill Nighy mould from the Pirates franchise. He has a credible back story, motivation, and everything else. But Jesse Plemons as the Prussian prince, Joachim, falls a bit flat. All he has is a cartoonish accent and the film sagged for me when he was on screen.
I mentioned earlier the inevitability of the plot, but this is a film where the journey is more important than the destination and Jungle Cruise is a thrilling adventure. Not only that, it seems inevitable that there will be a sequel, and I would heartily recommend booking a seat on the next trip.
