Jungle Cruise
2021
**½
Director: Jaume Collet-Serra
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Édgar Ramírez, Jack Whitehall, Jesse Plemons, Paul Giamatti, Veronica Falcon
During the First World War, Dr. Lily Houghton and her brother McGregor travel to the Amazon, where they hire riverboat skipper Frank Wolff to take them to the mythical Tree of Life. However, they are not the only ones trying to find it. Disney's big budget adventure is silly and entertaining but terribly unoriginal. It starts as a combination of The African Queen and The Mummy. As the trio travel further down the river, the whole thing turns into a Pirates of the Caribbean on the Amazon. Incidentally, this franchise is also based on a Walt Disney theme park ride. The movie relies too heavily on CGI, especially in the second half, and some of it (for example, the jaguar) looks pretty awful. Johnson and Blunt have good chemistry, though.
