Jungle Cruise (2021) We're starting to lose count of how many movies we've encountered that make us surrender in pure exhaustion......and declare that reviewing them would be as futile as reviewing a theme park ride......
If ever there was a movie that thought applied to, it's this one.......a movie based on one of Disneyland's most beloved theme park rides.......
And given that the bulk of it consists of CGI effects swirling around a few flesh and blood actors, who else would it star but the reigning hulk of bloated junk movies, Dwayne Johnson, whose physical dimensions already appear crafted by digital artists.......making him a performer most perfectly suited to cavort in exaggerated computer landscapes,
But surprise, surprise........this particular corporate Mouse House package ends up working well and delivering the fun it promises.........
It's been so long since we took the Jungle Cruise as an Disney park attendee (don't ask), we'd forgotten about the steady stream of terrible jokes that the cruise 'skipper' spews out in the course of the ride, an effects-laden tour of a river that blends African and Amazonian wildlife with some animatronic thrills 'n chills...
Those priceless 'dad jokes' are faithfully replicated here, and to his great credit, Johnson rapid-fires them with deadpan precision.......call us corny, call us old, but we couldn't get enough of 'em.....
As for the movie itself, its primary inspiration comes from writer-director Stephen Sommers two 'Mummy' adventures with Brendan Fraser. (1999's 'The Mummy' and 2001's "The Mummy Returns;).....
Instead of Rachel Weisz and Fraser as a plucky 'Indiana Jones' academic and devil-may-care, wisecracking hero, we now have Emily Blunt and Johnson as equivalent 1916 adventurers trading quips as they cope with a host of CGI creatures and assorted calamitous dangers.
These include a horde of ancient cursed Spanish conquistadors led by no less than the actual Lope de Aguirre .....yes, the same guy played by cinema's resident madman Klaus Kinski in 'Aguiree, The Wrath Of God' (1972) and almost murdered by his director Werner Herzog.
Everyone, Blunt, Johnson, the walking dead Aguirre and his merry zombies and an equally crazy German Prince ( Jesse Plemons) goes questing for a long lost tree whose leaves will cure all ills......(and won't need FDA and CDC approval either).
Okay, we'd be lying if we didn't admit that we thoroughly enjoyed this wallow in Disney-fied corporate sausage-making. The pace, stays lightning-fast, James Newton Howard's thunderous score keeps up with it all the way and the film's stuffed to the rafters with inventive gags, sights and sounds. As a three-ring CGI circus, it hits all its expected goals........
And unlike a worthless cash-grab with no reason to exist like 'Cruella', this movie at least had an entertaining source on which to to draw upon to show you a good time.
We say lay in a couple gallons of butter popcorn and take the cruise......it's as effective a way as any to forget the Winter Of Our Omicron Discontent.....3 stars (***).
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