Review of Jungle Cruise (2021) by Captiosus — 17 Aug 2021

Finally got around to watching Jungle Cruise and I honestly wish I hadn't. This movie did something few other movies have ever done: It made me resent the time it was wasting WHILE I was still watching it. About a third of the way in, I was already checking out but we had spent the money so I decided to keep suffering through. By the end of the film I was angry at the film for wasting my time, angry at myself for falling victim to the sunk cost fallacy, and dumber for having sat through the entire thing.

The plot is nonsensical even by "Disney themepark rides turned movie" standards, the runtime is far too long, there's zero feeling of tension or suspense thanks to the constantly bad CGI and cringe dialog. The movie is replete with direct ripoffs of Indiana Jones, The Mummy, the first Jumanji movie, and even Pirates of the Caribbean. The movie doesn't even establish a consistent villain opting, instead, to provide us with two-and-a-half of them: Jesse Plemons' "Prince Joachim", Edgar Ramirez's "Aguirre", and an utterly wasted Paul Giamatti as "Nilo Nemolato", a brief foil to Dwayne Johnson's "Frank".

So many of the professional reviews say Johnson and Blunt saved this movie but I found them to be the two biggest annoyances in the entire thing. Dwayne Johnson doesn't know what role he's trying to play here -- is he playing the strong guy, the leading man guy, the comedic guy? He tries playing all of the above. His performance is so bad that if you compare it to his other work, films like San Andreas suddenly seem Oscar-worthy. And Emily Blunt's talents are completely and utterly wasted here. Blunt, who elevated lesser movies like Looper and Edge of Tomorrow, who played a fantastic Mary Poppins despite the doubters, and whose range was showcased in both A Quiet Place films was little more than a cheap knockoff of Rachael Wiesz's "Evie" from the Mummy. These same reviews praise their on screen chemistry... What chemistry? All they had were bad jokes. There was no Indiana/Marion or Rick/Evie chemistry in this film compared to Indiana Jones or The Mummy, respectively. Hell, the romantic subplots of the made-for-TV "The Librarian" movies with Noah Wyle have more chemistry.

1 out of 10, and I'm being generous here. A complete waste of time and space and not deserving of being associated with the word "cinema". Complete trash, avoid like the plague. There are literally dozens of better options within the same genre than this tripe.