Disney’s Jungle Cruise

[Daniel]

Officially opens today. Currently 62% on Rotten Tomatoes. Fun as it looks, I'll be waiting for it to go free on Disney+. I have enough to catch up on as it is!

[Daniel]

Our family watched #JungleCruise and loved it! The chemistry between @TheRock and Emily Blunt was perfect. There has to be a sequel!

Thank you buddy! Glad you guys loved #JungleCruise and we have a sequel meeting next weekend

Has a ways to go but I could see it happening.

[James]

Just saw it today (in 4DX). I'll put my few comments in spoiler tags, but I'm not really spoiling much if you want to read them.

The first half is a lot of really great dumb fun. This is the movie I signed up for!

The second half of the movie wants to be PotC 2-5. It's all just a jumbled mess of overly complicated, supernatural, mumbo jumbo that loses all the fun of the first half. Worse, at least PotC 2-5 feel like someone took the time to plot all the twists and turns so that it all eventually makes some kind of sense if you can keep up with it. This feels like a first draft that they never went back and edited for coherence.

I really wish they had kept the tone from the first half throughout, even if that meant dropping a lot of the more magical elements for something more along the lines of Indiana Jones.

[Dan]

Just saw it in theaters with me mom. I was not prepared for a pleasant surprise and how well, I thought, it was incorporated. Guess it kinda tells you something about me that I was able to recognize it when it happened.

[James]

I have no idea what part you’re talking about!

[Ben]

Just saw it in theaters with me mom.

The movie's turned Dan into a pirate! Arr!

[Dan]

I have no idea what part you’re talking about!

Like I said, it says something about me that I was able to recognize it when it happened.

When the Disney logo starts, a familiar tune is played on the guitar. "Wait a minute!" I go. The tune plays some more and my suspicions are confirmed. "That's Metallica!"

A unique arrangement of Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" is used when in both tellings of the Conquistador venture. After watching the film, I looked up that Metallica not only collaborated with James Newton Howard in developing the arrangement, but did perform it, which is most notable during Frank's telling late in the film.

Oh, I've always been a pirate, Ben. Long before Jungle Cruise.

[Ben]

Well that was mildly disappointing…

Overly frenetic in the first half, which was otherwise pretty fun but slightly "forced", and then a sub-Pirates ending with all the mumbo jumbo as James put it. The dead sailors were straight off of Davy Jones' boat, and they didn’t use the take with the funniest line in the trailer for the actual movie when Dwayne and Emily swung out and tried to use his foot to secure themselves on the other side, which fell flat. And this is the third or fourth movie with a flippin' tree of life thingy that saps all peril out of things, although admittedly anyone that says they see one twist coming is talking baloney. But was was up with Plemmons and his ability to communicate with the bees (wha…?) only to squish them later, and where did he disappear to for half the movie!? Why was it set in the midst of The Great War only for that to factor in at a level of precisely zero?

Jungle Cruise was okay, and a certainly entertaining enough if hugely derivative couple of hours, but it’ll be a long while before I revisit it again. Felt like we'd seen bit of all this before, from Indy Jones, to especially The Mummy films and Pirates, which this struggles to reach the breezy fun and easy charm of the first two especially.

Not bad, but nowhere as near good as it looked.

[EricJ]

and then a sub-Pirates ending with all the mumbo jumbo as James put it. The dead sailors were straight off of Davy Jones' boat

So, as "When in doubt, remake Pirates, if one ingredient of the movie resembles it" big-budget Disney movies go, better or worse than "Lone Ranger"?

Why was it set in the midst of The Great War only for that to factor in at a level of precisely zero?

But there HAVE to be Germans, it's The African Queen, Sorta!

[Ben]

Well Plemmons is a German, with hammy accent, but not anywhere as over the top and hammy a performance as the film and his character needs.

And everything looks so *fake*! You can almost feel the blue and green screens rubbing off on you, especially in scenes where Emily is obviously running on a treadmill when her character is supposedly hopping about on tree branches.

I also missed a melodic score from Newton Howard — sure, it’s all rousing and does the Zimmer stabbing where it needs to, but there’s no one particular motif or even character themes that you come out humming.

About the best sequence is the rapids ride, where I did get a little excited, but much of the humor fell flat, for me, and The Lone Ranger is about the last film you could compare this too: both are overlong, and both have things that are good and bad about them.

[Daniel]

Arrives on digital August 31, home video November 16 and free on Disney+ November 12. Extras include blooper reel, behind-the-scenes featurette and 11 deleted scenes.

[Ben]

Ultimately passing on this one…it just wasn’t very good, and nothing felt or ever looked real.

[Randall]

Curious to see it, but happy to wait for "free" D+.

[Daniel]

Sequel is officially a go.

[Randall]

Well, I think the Steelbook looks quite sharp!

https://www.zavvi.com/blu-ray/jungle-cr ... 28554.html