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“Jungle Cruise” is made up of spare parts from better movies and at over two-hours in length, it’ll be tough on short attention spans. On the plus side, it is way better than “Haunted Mansion” and “Tomorrowland,” other Disney rides that morphed into movies. It’s all just an excuse for director Jaume Collet-Serra, who pitted Blake Lively against an angry shark in “The Shallows,” to lead Wolff and Houghton through a series of rousing perils. Houghton's brother doesn’t do much, though his coming-out to Frank would have raised eyebrows a century ago.
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Still, MacGregor’s blip of a backstory isn’t the only instance in which this early 20th century epic nods to a decidedly 21st century audience. As my Times colleague Todd Martens recently examined in a thoughtful, deeply reported piece, the Jungle Cruise ride, a Disneyland fixture since the park opened in 1955, recently underwent a significant overhaul that jettisoned its racist depictions of Indigenous people. The movie, through some clever tinkering, accomplishes something similar, turning its gallery of spear-brandishing headhunters into a sly joke at the expense of Western colonialist assumptions.
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Given the mutually beneficial relationship between the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and the films it spawned, I predict the same kind of relationship here. The climactic action — including revelations about Frank’s history — is so convoluted that many audiences will be checking out, especially as the movie careens toward the two-hour mark. That applies both to the unlocking of the Tears of the Moon mystery and to the inevitable battle with Aguirre and Joachim, even if the screenwriters’ bid to infuse a sense of the mythic elevates the story slightly above the generally juvenile level. Other than that, well…Plemons’ evil Saxon may worship the Kaiser instead of the Fürher, but he’s a screen Nazi by any other name, and the mustache-twirling giddiness he brings to this stock villain soon dissipates quicker than a cow leg in a piranha pool. And the ride’s legacy of blithe exoticism butting up against Tarzan-grade stereotypes — to quote a bit player here, “that booga-booga nonsense” — gets dealt with in a way that suggests a box has been summarily ticked off a previous-grievances list.
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Unsurprisingly, given his track record, Plemons steals the film right out from under its leads. Walt Disney originally intended that the Jungle Cruise would include live exotic animals, but experts warned him that live animals wouldn’t always cooperate for guests’ viewing pleasure. Attractions with live animals wouldn’t materialize until 1998 with the opening of Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials.
(“Are you wearing pants under your pants?” Frank asks.) We also see some indiginous folks go shirtless or (in the case of women) shoulder-baring garb. Life-saving, underwater swaps of oxygen resemble a pair of lip-to-lip kisses. Some banter over treating a wound—with Frank asking Lily if it’s her “first time”—is filled with possible light double entendres.
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The month ahead will bring new films from Alex Garland, Luca Guadagnino, Dev Patel, and more. To help you plan your moviegoing options, our editors have selected the most notable films releasing in April 2024, listed in alphabetical order. Not even Emily Blunt, doing her best Katharine Hepburn impression, can keep this leaky boat ride afloat.
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There’s a bunch of superfluous business with Nilo Nemolato (Paul Giamatti, with another shticky accent, plus a cockatoo), the commercial rival to whom he owes a bunch of money. But Lily is soon scammed into engaging Frank’s services, and they set off upriver on what could generously be called a rollicking, fantastical riff on Heart of Darkness. Some early humor comes from MacGregor packing like Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with trunk after trunk of toiletries and apparel for every occasion, most of which Frank tosses overboard. Meanwhile, Lily’s radical-for-the-era choice of pants is repeatedly emphasized to establish her feminist bona fides.
The real scene-stealer is a photorealistic jaguar named Proxima, who becomes everyone’s favorite pet. But the staging and execution of the chases and fights compensates. Derivative of films that were themselves highly derivative, "Jungle Cruise" has the look and feel of a paycheck gig for all involved, but everyone seems to be having a great time, including the filmmakers. The Zambezi Queen is a luxurious river safari cruise on the Chobe River, where the four countries of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia meet. Ideal for those who like to travel in style and comfort, yet still want to experience diverse wildlife and stunning natural surroundings.
Like Plemons and Giamatti, Ramirez is another talented actor squandered in a thankless part. There’s none of the hammy fun of his Pirates counterpart, played by Geoffrey Rush. The jungle and its creatures have ravaged the conquistadors’ bodies, suspending them between life and death, so Ramirez is rendered unrecognizable by CG excesses that transform him into a mass of writhing snakes.
If you’re visiting the Magic Kingdom during the Christmas season, the Jungle Cruise is transformed into the Jingle Cruise. As the story goes, the boat skippers are homesick around the holidays, so they added some holiday cheer to the jungle. Look for vintage seasonal decorations and signs around the queue area, a holiday radio music broadcast in the background, boats renamed with a holiday theme, and new jokes during your cruise.
“Jungle Cruise,” despite its more-than-capable leads and its much-vaunted attention to detail and verisimilitude, never feels transporting in the way that even mediocre blockbusters were once able to muster. It’s less an expedition than a simulation, a dispatch from a wild yet oddly pristine world where seeing is never close to believing. At times the leads seem more like a brother and sister needling each other than a will they/won’t they bantering couple. Lack of sexual heat is often (strangely) a bug, or perhaps a feature, in films starring Johnson, the four-quadrant blockbuster king (though not on Johnson’s HBO drama "Ballers"). Blunt keeps putting out more than enough flinty looks of interest to sell a romance, but her leading man rarely reflects it back at her.
Frankly it's surprising that McLean, whose previous movies (including Wolf Creek and The Belko Experiment) have pushed the envelope for gore, should tone down Jungle, as if attempting to respect its true story ... By the time the movie gets to its climax, with Yossi alone in the jungle and doing whatever it takes to survive, it fails to be either shocking or thrilling. Give Radcliffe credit, though, for his demanding physical performance; post-Harry Potter, he continues to select challenging projects.
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