Sunday, 28 November 2021

VOD: Jungle Cruise (dir: Jaume Collet-Serra, 2021)

"If I wanted to go to a primitive backwater, where I can't understand a word anyone's saying, I'd visit our relatives in Scotland!"
 

The elevator pitch for this film was probably 'theme park ride + The African Queen + The Mummy/Indiana Jones franchises', and it is essentially a standard CGI-laden formula blockbuster, and as such it is far too long, with a frustrating stop-start narrative that does try to flesh out its very basic characters with annoying flashbacks and exposition.  Emily Blunt is by far and consistently the best aspect of the movie with a solidly engaging take on the material, but Dwayne Johnson is on usual full charm mode with a nicely-played twist to his character that sets up the finale, and Jack Whitehall is effectively irritating as the prissy upper-class stereotype brother.  The film looks great in spite of variable effects and the set pieces are lively enough, but overall Jungle Cruise treads a very familiar path which, at over two hours, gets wearing.

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