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Review: Jungle Cruise (2021)
A totally silly mindless movie. An adventure movie in the style of Indiana Jones. An obvious commercial for an upcoming Disney attraction. Would not recommend because it was boring.
Spoilers.
Story
This movie was about our protagonists looking for a magical tree that would heal illnesses. Our main groups were:
- Lily and MacGregor Houghton, in search of the tree for altruistic reasons
- Frank, in search of the tree so that he can finally die
- Prince Joachim, in search of the tree for vague evil reasons
- Aguirre, in search of the tree to rid his curse
Lily, MacGregor, and Frank teamed up to travel to the Tree of Life. Along the way, they bumped into Prince Joachim who captured them so that he could get to the tree first. They also bumped into Aguirre who was Frank's old friend-turned-enemy. But in the end our heroes were able to get rid of the enemies and Frank, though he wanted to die, was given life (and mortality) because of the healing powers of the tree.
This movie was full of the blandest jokes from the beginning. Haha puns, haha funny nicknames Pants and Skippy. Nothing was new, nothing made me laugh. All of the gags were so old.
The part about the Puka Michuna tribe felt kind of insensitive. I guess it was supposed to be okay because they were purposely dressing up as an attraction, but I still didn't love the portrayal.
A lot of the movie was told in exposition, which got boring. The Rock sitting down for fifteen minutes to tell Lily about his whole tragic backstory just felt...stuffed in. MacGregor sitting down and telling Frank about why he loves Lily...largely irrelevant...it's not weird to love your sister even if she hasn't gone to hell and back for you.
The part about Lily going into the water was perhaps the most unrealistic. This woman is scared of swimming, and suddenly she's able to hold her breath long enough to turn that wheel when only minutes ago she was panicking. A person that afraid of the water would have been panicking underwater. Plus, a big first step to swimming is learning to hold your breath underwater and Lily definitely did not get that lesson. The entire 'Lily being afraid of water' storyline was just unnecessary and did absolutely nothing to nerf her character.
And romantic storyline was meh.
Very uninspiring.
Production
Fine. It looked fine. But at times in the river it really did look like a theme park.
Acting was as good as it could get. I think Emily Blunt and the Rock did the best of what they were asked to do. Funnily enough I didn't find their characters that annoying or insufferable. But they weren't characters that were inspiring.
Characters
Lily is our girlboss. The smarter of the siblings, etc. MacGregor was the scaredy cat. That's it. That's their dynamic.
Frank was supposed to be Lily's foil, the only one who could really stand on her level.
Joachim was supposed to be a caricature of a German lord. He was a prince after all. But ugh, whatever. Stereotypes about nationality are so old now.
Overall
Boring movie.
Spoilers.
Story
This movie was about our protagonists looking for a magical tree that would heal illnesses. Our main groups were:
- Lily and MacGregor Houghton, in search of the tree for altruistic reasons
- Frank, in search of the tree so that he can finally die
- Prince Joachim, in search of the tree for vague evil reasons
- Aguirre, in search of the tree to rid his curse
Lily, MacGregor, and Frank teamed up to travel to the Tree of Life. Along the way, they bumped into Prince Joachim who captured them so that he could get to the tree first. They also bumped into Aguirre who was Frank's old friend-turned-enemy. But in the end our heroes were able to get rid of the enemies and Frank, though he wanted to die, was given life (and mortality) because of the healing powers of the tree.
This movie was full of the blandest jokes from the beginning. Haha puns, haha funny nicknames Pants and Skippy. Nothing was new, nothing made me laugh. All of the gags were so old.
The part about the Puka Michuna tribe felt kind of insensitive. I guess it was supposed to be okay because they were purposely dressing up as an attraction, but I still didn't love the portrayal.
A lot of the movie was told in exposition, which got boring. The Rock sitting down for fifteen minutes to tell Lily about his whole tragic backstory just felt...stuffed in. MacGregor sitting down and telling Frank about why he loves Lily...largely irrelevant...it's not weird to love your sister even if she hasn't gone to hell and back for you.
The part about Lily going into the water was perhaps the most unrealistic. This woman is scared of swimming, and suddenly she's able to hold her breath long enough to turn that wheel when only minutes ago she was panicking. A person that afraid of the water would have been panicking underwater. Plus, a big first step to swimming is learning to hold your breath underwater and Lily definitely did not get that lesson. The entire 'Lily being afraid of water' storyline was just unnecessary and did absolutely nothing to nerf her character.
And romantic storyline was meh.
Very uninspiring.
Production
Fine. It looked fine. But at times in the river it really did look like a theme park.
Acting was as good as it could get. I think Emily Blunt and the Rock did the best of what they were asked to do. Funnily enough I didn't find their characters that annoying or insufferable. But they weren't characters that were inspiring.
Characters
Lily is our girlboss. The smarter of the siblings, etc. MacGregor was the scaredy cat. That's it. That's their dynamic.
Frank was supposed to be Lily's foil, the only one who could really stand on her level.
Joachim was supposed to be a caricature of a German lord. He was a prince after all. But ugh, whatever. Stereotypes about nationality are so old now.
Overall
Boring movie.