Film Review

Jungle Cruise (2021)

A wisecracking riverboat captain is hired by a doctor to help her find an ancient healing tree.

written by Jack Thomas.

Another Disney blockbuster based on a theme park ride, following Pirates of the Caribbean (2003), Jungle Cruise is unlikely to birth a similar franchise behemoth, but it’s an entertaining romp through adventure genre tropes… if a little heavy on the VFX. In the type of expositional prologue common to fantasy, we see a gang of 16th-century conquistadors meet their fate while pillaging their way across the jungle in search of the ‘Tears of the Moon’, a tree whose leaves are said to be able to cure any ailment. Cut to 1916, and botanist Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) hires riverboat captain Frank ‘Skipper’ Wolff (Dwayne Johnson) to guide her up the Amazon, together with her brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall), in order to find the mythical tree for herself. Meanwhile, crazy Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons), son of the German Kaiser, is also in search of the mythical tree, heading to South America by U-boat.