Rolling on the River

I actually wanted Jungle Cruise (2021) to be our first disc of 2022. I was a little worried when Rod Heath gave it low marks in his year-end round up. In the comments, he notes that Hollywood used to make a good film like this every other week - an adventure romp with a silly script, charming actors, some cool stunts and set pieces, all forgotten by the time the next one comes out. Well, we felt that Jungle Cruise met this standard just fine. 

It starts with Emily Blunt and her brother Jack Whitehall trying to convince the members of the London Adventurers Club to loan them a mysterious arrowhead McGuffin. They are refused, largely because Blunt wears trousers. While Whitehall stalls, Blunt sneaks in to steal it. Evil German prince Jesse Plemons shows up looking for the same McGuffin, and a fight breaks out, with Blunt on the library bookshelf ladder, sliding across the room. Here we note the first of many movie homages - to the Rachel Weisz Mummy, with Blunt as the spunky female explorer with an effete brother. 

We next head to the Amazon, where Dwayne Johnson is taking tourists on a jungle cruise in his beat-up boat. He shows up somehow managing to look a little like Bogart from African Queen. It's hard to imagine a less likely Bogie, but they pull it off. Anyway here we get the classic Disney ride, with fake hippos, a fake waterfall, bogus natives, and Johnson spouting all the classic bad puns and dad jokes. 

Johnson's boat is continually falling apart, and he's in danger of having Paul Giamatti repossess it. So when Blunt and Whitehall come along looking for a boat up the river, Johnson fights a jaguar to show how capable he is. Of course, we later find out that the cat is his pet, but isn't that just as badass? And so we head up the Amazon, with Plemons following in his German river U-Boat.

The rest of the movie is a combination of utterly predictable and off-the-wall. Just to throw in a spoiler, Blunt is searching for a magic flower which heals all illness and lifts all curses. It turns out that Johnson is under a curse - he was a conquistador along with Aguirre's (the Wrath of God) crew. Cursed to be immortal and to never leave the river. That's kind of fun, because he gets killed a few times, but of course can't die.

Now, I understand what Rod was complaining about. This is very overstuffed with fights, stunts, and CGI "locations". Each time a movie like this comes along, it has to be bigger, crazier, and more 'splodey than the last. But we like loud 'splodey movies, particularly when featuring beloved actors like Johnson and Blunt. 

Plus I love that Johnson can't stop the bad jokes - even when facing death. When they are headed into headhunter territory, he says, meaningfully, it's a bad place to "be headed".