Jungle Cruise

[Jon Dent]

Take 1/4th Raiders of the Lost Ark, add in 1/2 The Mummy (1999 version), and season the rest with Pirates of the Caribbean, and you get Jungle Cruise. I've never been to Disneyland nor ridden the ride this is 'based' on, but much like "Pirates" it really doesn't make a difference. Nor does the plot, for that matter. You're here to see Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt riff of each other while surrounded by pretty jungle scenery and moderately intense, "Disney PG-13" adventure.

And judged by those merits, Jungle Cruise works. It's not as fresh as Raiders or as charming as The Mummy. Johnson tries, but he's no Brendan Frasier, and he and Blunt's chemistry doesn't go quite far enough to make the romantic elements convincing. It is entertaining enough to get a pass, if just barely.

Looks and sounds good though, much better than the latest crop of Disney movies (Raya, Cruella, Black Widow), and the sight of Johnson's freakish physique jammed into undersized WW1 era British formalwear is almost worth the price of admission, as is his endless supply of bad puns and awful Dad jokes. Dads, take notes...

[Mike Blakesley]

This is playing right now and we have a sold-out crowd (as sold out as we can be, with one-seat social distancing in effect). It's early in the movie but laughter from the crowd is plentiful, so that's always a good sign.

Anyone who has ever ridden the much-beloved Jungle Cruise ride at Disney's parks will notice the familiarity of some of the jokes (the "backside of water" among them) and my current favorite so far is:

The Rock: That barracuda will eat you alive!
Tourist with kid: Please, sir! This is a small child!
The Rock: Oh, he loves small children.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Last time I was on that ride was in 1962 and I was about 6 years old then... I actually liked Knott's Berry Farm better at that age.

[Marcel Birgelen]

That ride has some interesting lore attached to it... apparently they simply drew some lines in the sand and started to dig out a canal between both of those lines. Also, most of the original trees alongside the attraction were recovered from people and public engineering projects that had some trees to discard. Many trees came from private people, but most trees apparently from highway construction sites.

[Terry Monohan]

We enjoyed the 'Jungle Cruise' movie. First time I have seen a movie both in 4DX and 3D at the new Regal 12 Stonestown in San Francisco CA this past Sunday.

The 3D was good in places. So many theatres in the SF Bay Area are just showing it in 2D, too bad including the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland that has a two projector 3D set up they are just showing in the large cinema in regular 2D.

One thing that did not work so hot in Theatre#1 Regal 12 SF 4DX was when the wind came on in many places It was a cold misty ac breeze. You would think with the jungle set up on this movie some heat would have come out of the ceiling effect fans. We did enjoy all the other 4DX effects.

The movie was fun and loved all the water and special effects used!

[Mike Blakesley]

Last time I was on that ride was in 1962

I first rode it in 1979 at Disneyland. It seems like it was originally more "serious" and the pun-crazy skippers didn't arrive until later. I always thought that Disney said "the animatronics on this ride are really out of date and cheap looking compared to the new stuff, but we don't have the budget for new animatronics on this, so how can we save this ride from being the laughingstock of Disney?" and somebody came up with the idea of really leaning into the cheesiness.

My favorite part of the whole experience, as it is now, is the crappy sound systems they have on the boats. You can barely understand what the skippers are saying, which somehow adds to the charm of it all.

[Marcel Birgelen]

The animatronics they're putting into many of the new rides are really really really expensive... Putting them under water doesn't make it any cheaper. There are some nice documentaries out there on how they built the original Jaws attraction at Universal Studios Florida twice, because the first version just wouldn't work. Many modern attractions tend to avoid over-reliance on animatronics and try to solve stuff with smart projections and only put animatronics in where absolutely necessary.

Jungle Cruise obviously is hard to take seriously nowadays, that's also why it has become more like a cynical re-incarnation of itself over the years. You could put in tens of millions into it, in order to improve the quality of the animatronics, but that would hardly improve the guest experience, as the essence of the ride would still be the same. Also, there still is that little factor of nostalgia left. While most other attractions got large updates and quality bumps over the years, Jungle Cruise has only gotten minor updates, mostly to get rid of those "potential discriminatory depictions of human interaction...".

[Mike Blakesley]

Finally got a chance to watch the movie yesterday.

This movie just won't quit. We originally had it booked for 2 weeks (we were going to drop it for Free Guy) but it did well enough that they wanted us to keep it, which we did, and it's still kicking butt. For matinee today and evening last night, we were nearly sold out, which near-sellouts in week 3 is completely unheard of for us. This movie is up there with Avengers Endgame-type numbers. I just don't understand it -- it guess it just checks all the boxes for our audience. Whatever, I'm not complaining!

The movie itself was good and bad for me.... I liked it a lot, but it wasn't as funny as I hoped it would be. I thought it would have more callbacks to the park attraction, but the only thing it really has in common with it are the aforementioned Dad jokes, and the fact it takes place in a jungle. (Oh there's a mention of Dr. Albert Falls, but just a mention.)

The action scenes are terrific. There's a great river-rafting whitewater scene which is pretty over the top (they manage to avoid going over a huge waterfall and plunging to certain death, but then they manage to keep going down river... how did they pull that off?) and the movie has, as all movies must these days, a tiny little thing (in this case a flower petal) which will save the world, or in this case "cure any disease and change the course of medicine." Once this thing is found, it's plugged into the proper place which results in all sorts of lights and other special effects, which are cool looking but you find yourself remembering back to the dozen other recent movies that have ended with something similar. Or at least I did.

They also threw in another feature which is becoming all too common in movies these days... the lead actor is killed, but is brought back to life again. This of course is necessary if you want to do sequels. So why don't they just avoid writing death scenes into the movies to start with? How about coming perilously close to death, wouldn't that be sufficient?

The CGI animals were a tad bit annoying because they just can't seem to get them to look right. I think mainly it's because they use CGI to get animals to do things they would never do in real life, even if highly trained.

I thought the chemistry between Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson was fun. They work well together. The sound mix was terrific. The score, by James Newton Howard, was awesome, I thought -- it's an enjoyable movie to listen to even if you're not watching it.

There's already talk of a sequel, which given the business this one is doing, I'm all in favor of. But as a movie, I thought it was just OK. Jon's appraisal of the plot at the beginning of the original post above was spot on. It was a fun watch, but not too memorable. 3 out of 5 stars from me.

[Jon Dent]

We did the opposite: we booted JC for Free Guy. That is looking like a mistake now. JC was doing better on it's second week with us than Free Guy is on it's first.

[James Wyrembelski]

We did the opposite: we booted JC for Free Guy. That is looking like a mistake now.

Same here....and that second week drop on Friday? Oooof.

I knew JC would do well...but it was the first time it felt normal again. I was sad to see it go. Was nice to hear the room laugh again... good film overall.

[Jon Dent]

Free Guy has been pretty consistent for us into week two. Definitely not as good as JC numbers but not much drop. Our theater is kinda weird like that though, a lot of times a movie we screen won't really find it's legs until the second week.

[Jon Goeldner]

this surprised me, guess I went into seeing this with the bar lowered considerably - what a fun summer movie from Disney.