Post by Dracula on Jan 11, 2022 1:02:26 GMT -5
Jungle Cruise(12/16/2021)
The thing with a lot of these modern Disney productions is that they tend to be emblematic of a lot of bland dullness in cinema today, but they also tend to be a bit too competent and a bit too successful on their own terms to really pan them. Such is the case with their recent film Jungle Cruise which is a deeply unambitious project made without a lot of heart but which is nonetheless probably better made and more successful than I was expecting it to be. The film clearly wants to be an adventure movie in the mold of a Indiana Jones, but in many ways it more closely resembles the 1999 version of The Mummy: both films involve a roguish but goofy man, an academic woman, and a comic relief rich guy taking on a supernatural force in a faraway land in the early 20th Century. So despite technically not being a remake or a sequel or something it’s pretty damn derivative, in fact it’s kind of a copy of a copy of a copy. That said there is at least some residual charm to be found here. Dwayne Johnson is doing his usual thing, and Emily Blunt and Jack Whitehall are functional in their supporting roles. The villains are also kind of neat as these things go and there is a twist at about the two thirds point that I will say I didn’t see coming… insomuch as this was not a movie I expected to deviate from formula even a little. At the end of the day it’s a movie that more or less delivers on the very little it promises and which can be forgotten pretty quickly. To be fair though, I’m obviously not this movie’s target audience. I have a lot of residual good feelings about that Mummy movie I probably wouldn’t have had if I saw it as a jaded adult and I suspect this movie will also be pretty fondly remembered by the younger people in its audience.
**1/2 out of Five
The thing with a lot of these modern Disney productions is that they tend to be emblematic of a lot of bland dullness in cinema today, but they also tend to be a bit too competent and a bit too successful on their own terms to really pan them. Such is the case with their recent film Jungle Cruise which is a deeply unambitious project made without a lot of heart but which is nonetheless probably better made and more successful than I was expecting it to be. The film clearly wants to be an adventure movie in the mold of a Indiana Jones, but in many ways it more closely resembles the 1999 version of The Mummy: both films involve a roguish but goofy man, an academic woman, and a comic relief rich guy taking on a supernatural force in a faraway land in the early 20th Century. So despite technically not being a remake or a sequel or something it’s pretty damn derivative, in fact it’s kind of a copy of a copy of a copy. That said there is at least some residual charm to be found here. Dwayne Johnson is doing his usual thing, and Emily Blunt and Jack Whitehall are functional in their supporting roles. The villains are also kind of neat as these things go and there is a twist at about the two thirds point that I will say I didn’t see coming… insomuch as this was not a movie I expected to deviate from formula even a little. At the end of the day it’s a movie that more or less delivers on the very little it promises and which can be forgotten pretty quickly. To be fair though, I’m obviously not this movie’s target audience. I have a lot of residual good feelings about that Mummy movie I probably wouldn’t have had if I saw it as a jaded adult and I suspect this movie will also be pretty fondly remembered by the younger people in its audience.
**1/2 out of Five
