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In the pantheon of Disney movies based on Disney theme park rides, "Jungle Cruise" is pretty good—leagues better than dreck like "Haunted Mansion," though not quite as satisfying as the original "Pirates of the Caribbean." 

The most pleasant surprise is that director Jaume Collet-Serra (" The Shallows ") and a credited team of five, count 'em, writers have largely jettisoned the ride's mid-century American colonial snarkiness and casual racism (a tradition  only recently eliminated ). Setting the revamp squarely in the wheelhouse of blockbuster franchise-starters like " Raiders of the Lost Ark ," " Romancing the Stone " and "The Mummy," and pushing the fantastical elements to the point where the story barely seems to be taking place in our universe, it's a knowingly goofy romp, anchored to the banter between its leads, an English feminist and adventurer played by Emily Blunt and a riverboat captain/adventurer played by  Dwayne Johnson . 

Notably, however, even though the stars' costumes (and a waterfall sequence) evoke the classic "The African Queen"—John Huston's comic romance/action film starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn ; worth looking up if you've never watched it—the sexual chemistry between the two is nonexistent, save for a few fleeting moments, like when Frank picks up the heroine‘s hand-cranked silent film camera and captures affectionate images of her. At times the leads seem more like a brother and sister needling each other than a will they/won’t they bantering couple. Lack of sexual heat is often (strangely) a bug, or perhaps a feature, in films starring Johnson, the four-quadrant blockbuster king (though not on Johnson’s HBO drama "Ballers"). Blunt keeps putting out more than enough flinty looks of interest to sell a romance, but her leading man rarely reflects it back at her. Fortunately, the film's tight construction and prolific action scenes carry it, and Blunt and Johnson do the irresistible force/immovable object dynamic well enough, swapping energies as the story demands.

Blunt's character, Lily Houghton, is a well-pedigreed adventurer who gathers up maps belonging to her legendary father and travels to the Amazon circa 1916 to find the Tears of the Moon, petals from a "Tree of Life"-type of fauna that can heal all infirmities. She and her snooty, pampered brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall) hire Frank "Skipper" Wolff (Johnson) to bring them to their destination. The only notable concession to the original theme park ride comes here: Wolff's day job is taking tourists upriver and making cheesy jokes in the spirit of "hosts" on Disney Jungle Cruise rides of yore. On the mission, Johnson immediately settles into a cranky but funny old sourpuss vibe, a la John Wayne or Harrison Ford , and inhabits it amiably enough, even though buoyant, almost childlike optimism comes more naturally to him than world-weary gruffness. 

The supporting cast is stacked with overqualified character players. Paul Giamatti plays a gold-toothed, sunburned, cartoonishly “Italian” harbor master who delights at keeping Frank in debt. Edgar Ramirez is creepy and scary as a conquistador whose curse from centuries ago has trapped him in the jungle.  Jesse Plemons plays the main baddie, Prince Joachim, who wants to filch the power of the petals for the Kaiser back in Germany (he's Belloq to the stars' Indy and Marion, trying to swipe the Ark). Unsurprisingly, given his track record, Plemons steals the film right out from under its leads.

Collet-Serra keeps the action moving along, pursuing a more classical style than is commonplace in recent live-action Disney product (by which I mean, the blocking and editing have a bit of elegance, and you always know where characters are in relation to each other). The editing errs on the side of briskness to such an extent that affecting, beautiful, or spectacular images never get to linger long enough to become iconic. The CGI is dicey, particularly on the larger jungle animals—was the production rushed, or were the artists just overworked?—and there are moments when everything seems so rubbery/plasticky that you seem to be watching the first film that was actually shot on location at Disney World.

But the staging and execution of the chases and fights compensates. Derivative of films that were themselves highly derivative, "Jungle Cruise" has the look and feel of a paycheck gig for all involved, but everyone seems to be having a great time, including the filmmakers.

In theaters and on Disney+ for a premium charge starting Friday, July 30th. 

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Jungle Cruise (2021)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of adventure violence.

127 minutes

Dwayne Johnson as Frank Wolff

Emily Blunt as Dr. Lily Houghton

Jack Whitehall as McGregor Houghton

Edgar Ramírez as Aguirre

Jesse Plemons as Prince Joachim

Paul Giamatti as Nilo

• Jaume Collet-Serra

Writer (story)

• Glenn Ficarra
• Josh Goldstein
• John Norville

Cinematographer

• Flavio Martínez Labiano
• Joel Negron
• James Newton Howard

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Jungle cruise, common sense media reviewers.

Ride-based adventure is fun, if predictable; peril, scares.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Promotes courage, perseverance, teamwork. Characte

Lily is a pioneering botanist and adventurer -- a

Frequent peril/tension, action violence, physical

Lily and Frank banter and flirt, eventually sharin

"Oh my God," "ruddy," "fresh hell," "crusty old fa

This movie is based on/promotes a Disney ride. Lot

Adults drink in taverns, where some background cha

Parents need to know that Jungle Cruise is an action-fantasy adventure inspired by the classic Disneyland ride. Set in 1916, it follows intrepid Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt), who hires skipper Frank Wolff (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) to guide her and her brother down the Amazon River in search of a mythical…

Positive Messages

Promotes courage, perseverance, teamwork. Characters work together and think creatively to defeat a curse, vengeful enemies, a sociopathic villain. Characters' stories/journeys promote idea of personal growth and value of acceptance and living a nontraditional life. You don't have to be what everyone expects you to be.

Positive Role Models

Lily is a pioneering botanist and adventurer -- a Ph.D. who's never afraid of being the only woman in a room. She's brave, smart, resourceful, goes after what she wants (often bending rules to do so). Frank is knowledgeable, protective. Both are willing to put themselves in danger for their missions -- and each other. MacGregor is a dedicated brother who accompanies and supports Lily; he implies but never says outright that she was the only person who stuck by him when he realized he was gay. Native Amazonians are initially portrayed as cannibal warriors out to capture (and eat) foreigners, but ( spoiler alert ) it turns out to be for show. Still, the story exploits those stereotypes and certain others (MacGregor is fussy and high maintenance, Joachim is cartoonishly German, etc.), and Joachim's accent is played for humor.

Violence & Scariness

Frequent peril/tension, action violence, physical comedy, creepy imagery -- including conquistadores being turned to stone or coming back to "life" while made of bees, snakes, etc. Native Amazonians are killed, a villain is squashed. At one point, it's suggested that a key character has died. People get abducted, slapped, stabbed, bitten by snakes and piranhas, threatened/attacked by a jaguar. Falls, chases, explosions. Torpedo and guns fired, swords and knives brandished. A villain callously smashes bees. Amazonians are described as cannibals, but ( spoiler alert ) it's just for show. Arguments/yelling.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Lily and Frank banter and flirt, eventually sharing longing looks. Characters share a kiss. A conversation about extracting a knife borders on suggestive.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"Oh my God," "ruddy," "fresh hell," "crusty old farts," "shove it up your association," "booga booga," "wimpy," etc.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

This movie is based on/promotes a Disney ride. Lots of merchandise tie-ins off camera.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adults drink in taverns, where some background characters seem to be drinking heavily. Characters drink whiskey from a flask, liquor from bottles. A jaguar drinks spilled wine, gets tipsy. MacGregor brings an entire suitcase of liquor on board.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Jungle Cruise is an action-fantasy adventure inspired by the classic Disneyland ride. Set in 1916, it follows intrepid Dr. Lily Houghton ( Emily Blunt ), who hires skipper Frank Wolff ( Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson ) to guide her and her brother down the Amazon River in search of a mythical healing tree. Violence and peril are the biggest issues: Expect frequent danger, creepy cursed villains (as well as a cartoonishly evil German baddie), weapons (guns, torpedoes, swords, knives), an implied significant death (and some actual less significant ones), threatening snakes, and a jaguar that looks more vicious than she actually is. Adult characters drink from flasks and bottles, and an animal gets tipsy. One conversation about removing a knife from someone's body could be perceived as suggestive (though the double meaning will likely go over kids' heads), and there's some flirty banter and a couple of kisses. Without saying it outright, one character comes out to another, who's supportive. While main characters demonstrate impressive courage, perseverance, and teamwork, the movie's initial depiction of Native Amazonians as a tribe of angry cannibals is concerning, even though ( spoiler alert ) it turns out it's largely for show. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (35)
• Kids say (66)

Based on 35 parent reviews

Turn it off about an hour in...

Action and adventure, what's the story.

Set in 1916, JUNGLE CRUISE opens with bold botanist Dr. Lily Houghton ( Emily Blunt ) stealing an Amazonian arrowhead from an elite -- and anti-woman -- British explorers' club. The artifact is supposed to lead Houghton to a mysterious location on the Amazon River where legendary healing flowers bloom on an ancient tree. Lily and her brother, MacGregor ( Jack Whitehall ), head to the Amazon and hire brash skipper Frank Wolff ( Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson ) to guide them on the perilous river trip. Along the way, Lily and Frank must avoid not only the natural dangers of the Amazon but also a villainous German prince ( Jesse Plemons ) who's also searching for the tree, as well as a group of Spanish conquistadores who need the flower's petals to reverse their immortal curse.

Is It Any Good?

The irresistibly charming stars help make this adventurous, occasionally swashbuckling ride adaptation amusing, if not as memorable as The Mummy or Pirates of the Caribbean . Johnson can make nearly any character likable; here, Frank's silly, punny jokes are also a fun nod to the Disney ride's vibe. Blunt, likewise, is ideally cast as the pioneering Dr. Houghton. Lily bucks social mores of the time by having a job and a Ph.D., knowing how to defend herself, and even wearing trousers (Frank calls her "Pants"). She also has a refreshingly close relationship with her brother, who's posh and fussy but is still willing to follow her into murky, life-threatening situations. Other members of the cast are underused -- like Paul Giamatti as a local riverboat mogul and Edgar Ramirez as head conquistador Aguirre -- or they overact, like Plemons' caricature of a sociopathic German villain, Prince Joachim.

The movie's landscaping and production art are vibrant and immersive, and director Jaume Collet-Serra should be applauded for making sure to organically include themes of gender, class, and discrimination against the Amazonian natives -- without being preachy. Still, the movie's portrayal of those natives is a bit cringey, even if the movie course-corrects to subvert the same stereotypes it initially seems to be perpetuating. Luckily, Blunt and Johnson cheerfully elevate the story enough to make audiences gloss over some of the screenplay's missteps and enjoy the ride.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the level of violence in Jungle Cruise . Does stylized or fantasy violence impact viewers differently than more realistic violence?

How do Lily's actions convey that she is both brave and smart? Do you consider her a role model ? What character strengths does she demonstrate?

How is drinking depicted in the movie? Are there consequences for any character's drinking? Why does that matter?

Did you notice any stereotypes in the film? Why is the initial depiction of the Native Amazonians problematic? Is it excused by the fact that the tribe is in on the joke/plan?

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 30, 2021
• On DVD or streaming : November 12, 2021
• Cast : Emily Blunt , Dwayne Johnson , Edgar Ramirez , Jack Whitehall
• Director : Jaume Collet-Serra
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors, Polynesian/Pacific Islander actors, Latino actors
• Studio : Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Adventures , Brothers and Sisters
• Character Strengths : Courage , Perseverance , Teamwork
• Run time : 127 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : sequences of adventure violence
• Last updated : April 22, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Our editors recommend.

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Dwayne johnson and emily blunt in ‘jungle cruise’: film review.

The perennial Disneyland theme park ride goes the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' route with Jaume Collet-Serra's big-screen adventure, in which Amazon explorers encounter threats both human and supernatural.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Of all the longtime favorite rides of the Disneyland theme parks, the Jungle Cruise , introduced in 1955, is among the most enduringly captivating. Sailing on a 1930s British steamer down the major rivers of Southeast Asia, Africa and South America through lush vegetation, accompanied by a skipper with a weakness for bad puns while Audio-Animatronic animals pop up in the waterways or on the riverbanks, the quaint Adventureland attraction is the very definition of transporting. Those central elements survive in Disney’s big-screen offshoot, though just barely, given the writers’ assiduous efforts to drown them in overplotting.

Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra is usually found putting Liam Neeson through his B-movie action-man paces, or, more memorably, pitting Blake Lively against a pesky shark in The Shallows . But family-friendly humor isn’t quite his strong point, and the absence of a light touch here means that even the teasing banter and sexual tension between appealing leads Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt is a bit stiff. By the time they start wrestling with 400-year-old undead conquistadors and an evil spawn of the German kaiser who navigates the Amazon in a submarine, you probably won’t much care if they find the elusive object of their expedition, let alone seal it with a kiss.

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Release date : Friday, July 30 Cast : Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Edgar Ramirez, Jack Whitehall, Jesse Plemons, Paul Giamatti, Veronica Falcón, Dani Rovira, Quim Gutiérrez Director : Jaume Collet-Serra Screenwriters : Michael Green, Glenn Ficarra, John Requa; story by John Norville, Josh Goldstein, Ficarra, Requa

Everything about Jungle Cruise points not to creative inspiration in spinning a feature property out of the ride, but to corporate bean counters enthusing, “Hey, it worked for Pirates of the Caribbean !” Following that template to a fault, the project has been in the works for more than 15 years, originally slated to shoot in 2005 for a 2006 release date. Since then, the script has passed through many hands before being taken up by Michael Green (who co-wrote the terrific Wolverine farewell, Logan , and penned Kenneth Branagh’s Agatha Christie remakes) with Glenn Ficarra and John Requa.

Though kids are the target demographic, anyone older is likely to spend a lot of time thinking about the superior films being ransacked here for ideas, among them Raiders of the Lost Ark , Romancing the Stone and The African Queen . But the Disney brand and the Rock factor should ensure a sizable audience.

The problem of a numbingly overcomplicated storyline is apparent from the 10-minute pre-title sequence. Hurried narration explains that a single petal from a great tree deep in the heart of the Amazon jungle — known as the Tears of the Moon — can cure any illness or break any curse. Countless explorers over the centuries have attempted to find it and harness its powers, including Spanish conquistadors led by Aguirre (Edgar Ramirez), who betrayed the indigenous guardians of the tree who rescued his expedition’s men from the jungle’s menace. With his dying breath, the native chief cursed them to remain eternally within sight of the river, unable to leave or die.

Cut to London in 1916, two years into World War I. Blunt’s Lily Houghton, a female Indiana Jones fully equipped with pith helmet and safari gear, infiltrates the chambers of a science society to steal a recently recovered arrowhead believed to be the key to finding the Tears of the Moon. As a decoy, her brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall) presents her theories about the unparalleled healing powers of the mysterious tree, which could revolutionize modern medicine and greatly aid the war effort.

While the starchy boys’ club membership is rejecting their request for support, Lily is behind the scenes in a slapsticky scuffle with nefarious Prince Joachim of Germany ( Jesse Plemons , with a chewy accent) for possession of the arrowhead, which culminates with her dangling over Piccadilly Circus on a precariously suspended ladder. By the time Lily and fussbudget toff MacGregor reach the Brazilian port that will be their embarkation point, I was already growing restless.

The situation improves once Johnson shows up as Frank Wolff, who runs what he calls the best and cheapest river cruise on the Amazon on his beat-up boat. He’s an affable rascal, in cahoots with crafty female tribal chief Trader Sam (Veronica Falcón) to give the tourists an alarming thrill as part of a ride that includes rigged animal appearances. The enjoyable sequence that introduces Frank deftly tethers the film to its Adventureland roots and would have made a far more engaging opening.

There’s a bunch of superfluous business with Nilo Nemolato (Paul Giamatti, with another shticky accent, plus a cockatoo), the commercial rival to whom he owes a bunch of money. But Lily is soon scammed into engaging Frank’s services, and they set off upriver on what could generously be called a rollicking, fantastical riff on Heart of Darkness . Some early humor comes from MacGregor packing like Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , with trunk after trunk of toiletries and apparel for every occasion, most of which Frank tosses overboard. Meanwhile, Lily’s radical-for-the-era choice of pants is repeatedly emphasized to establish her feminist bona fides.

Frank repeatedly exaggerates the dangers ahead — and fabricates some scares — to encourage Lily to turn back. But the feisty explorer remains determined, even when they face treacherous rapids. As they search for the sacred tree, Prince Joachim does everything possible to blow them out of the water, first with weaponry and then by setting loose the reanimated conquistadors. (The German’s supernatural communication powers are never quite explained.) The pointed detail that the otherwise fearless Lily can’t swim makes it no surprise when she is forced to lead a daring underwater maneuver, which at the same time ups the romantic ante with Frank.

The climactic action — including revelations about Frank’s history — is so convoluted that many audiences will be checking out, especially as the movie careens toward the two-hour mark. That applies both to the unlocking of the Tears of the Moon mystery and to the inevitable battle with Aguirre and Joachim, even if the screenwriters’ bid to infuse a sense of the mythic elevates the story slightly above the generally juvenile level.

Like Plemons and Giamatti, Ramirez is another talented actor squandered in a thankless part. There’s none of the hammy fun of his Pirates counterpart, played by Geoffrey Rush. The jungle and its creatures have ravaged the conquistadors’ bodies, suspending them between life and death, so Ramirez is rendered unrecognizable by CG excesses that transform him into a mass of writhing snakes. One of his comrades (Dani Rovira) is the spirit of the beehive — in what’s almost certainly not an homage to the classic Victor Erice film.

Blunt and Johnson at least keep it watchable, and Frank’s groan-inducing jokes are fun enough. Sample: “We’re headed into headhunter territory, which is a terrible place to be headed.” Both Frank and Lily are well-drawn characters, and their opposites-attract chemistry is serviceable in that sexless Disney way. But there’s no larger-than-life persona along the lines of Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow to galvanize the frantic action. And while Collet-Serra handles the accelerating physical mayhem efficiently, he lacks the joyous verve and inventiveness, the controlled chaos that Gore Verbinski brought to his movies in the Pirates franchise.

The novelty here, already widely commented on while the film was in production, is Disney’s first openly gay character, MacGregor. Leaving aside the outcry over the casting of an actor who identifies as heterosexual, Brit comedian Whitehall is a likable presence, even if his posh blathering makes him more of a familiar type than a distinctive character. MacGregor’s account to Frank of his bumpy family history, being disinherited after refusing various suitable marriage opportunities because his interest lay “elsewhere,” is played unambiguously. But his gradual transformation from stuffed shirt into plucky adventurer is strictly by-the-numbers.

Jungle Cruise is a typically well-upholstered Disney package, shot by Flavio Labiano with vibrancy and lots of swooping camerawork in the action scenes. (Hawaiian locations stand in for the Amazon rainforest.) It’s handsomely appointed with period trappings by production designer Jean-Vincent Puzos and costume designer Paco Delgado, and wrapped up in a boisterous orchestral score by James Newton Howard — although an interlude of crunchy electric guitars is a little mystifying. The CG creatures, notably a jaguar named Proxima, are the usual mixed bag of artificial-looking photorealism, though young audiences seldom seem to mind.

If only the core charms that have given the Disneyland ride such longevity weren’t so smothered by overstuffed plot. Compared to other attempts to turn theme park attractions into fresh revenue streams, it’s not as lifeless as The Haunted Mansion or Tomorrowland . But that doesn’t mean it’s good.

Full credits

Distributor: Disney/Disney+ Production companies: David Entertainment Company, Seven Bucks, Flynn Picture Co. Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Edgar Ramirez, Jack Whitehall, Jesse Plemons, Paul Giamatti, Veronica Falcón, Dani Rovira, Quim Gutiérrez Director: Jaume Collet-Serra Screenwriters: Michael Green, Glenn Ficarra, John Requa; story by John Norville, Josh Goldstein, Ficarra, Requa Producers: John Davis, John Fox, Beau Flynn, Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia, Hiram Garcia Executive producers: Scott Sheldon, Doug Merrifield Director of photography: Flavio Labiano Production designer: Jean-Vincent Puzos Costume designer: Paco Delgado Music: James Newton Howard Editor: Joel Negron Visual effects supervisors: Jim Berney, Jake Morrison Casting: Mary Vernieu, Marisol Roncali

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Disney’s Jungle Cruise Is Murder

“The jungle,” Werner Herzog used to say, “is murder.” Although Disney’s Jungle Cruise is ostensibly based on the popular theme-park ride, one could say that it has taken Herzog’s immortal maxim as a kind of surface inspiration. “Know this about the jungle,” Dwayne Johnson’s riverboat captain Frank says early in the film, “everything you see wants to kill you — and can.” There are other Herzog callbacks in the film: The villains include the Spanish conquistador Lope de Aguirre (the subject of one of Herzog’s best-known films, Aguirre, the Wrath of God ) as well as an obsessive German aristocrat named Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons), who seems to sport Herzog’s accent ; there’s even an extended gag at one point about the Herzogian way Joachim pronounces “jungle”: “chonk-leh.” Whatever. I chuckled. Sue me.

Herzog is an odd reference point, surely, but that’s also in keeping with the central tension in Jungle Cruise , between the darker, more intense and exciting movie it clearly wants to be and the mealymouthed CGI panderfest that it is. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra — a filmmaker previously known for gonzo thrillers like Orphan and The Shallows and some of the more compelling entries in the Liam Neeson dadsploitation subgenre — the picture might have amounted to something had it been able to deliver on the one essential element any kind of adventure (even one made primarily for kids) needs: a real sense of danger.

It didn’t need to be this way, surely. The opening scenes show some promise. We first meet the spirited Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) as she sneaks around in the back rooms of the Royal Geographic Society, looking for an ancient arrowhead that holds the key to finding a magic, all-healing Amazonian blossom called the Tears of the Moon. But it’s 1916, two years into the Great War, and there’s a sinister German aristocrat — the aforementioned Joachim, who may or may not be Kaiser Wilhelm’s son — also after this artefact.

In his previous works, Collet-Serra proved quite adept playing with screen geography, and he brings charm and energy to these early scenes of Lily maneuvering around this place while Joachim pursues her, each of them using the various objects around them. Similarly, when we meet Frank “Skipper” Wolff (Johnson), the captain of a decaying, rickety Amazon riverboat, we see him conning tourists into seeing fake sights such as a phony giant hippo, a rickety waterfall, and a group of supposedly savage natives whom he’s secretly paid off to scare the foreigners.

There’s a Rube Goldbergian verve to these early sequences, and by the time Lily and her brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall) have employed Frank to take them into the heart of the Amazon, you might be fooled into thinking that Jungle Cruise is poised to recapture the swashbuckling magic of classics like Raiders of the Lost Ark , The Mask of Zorro , the 1999 iteration of The Mummy , or the original Pirates of the Caribbean , with a little African Queen thrown in. It certainly liberally borrows from just about all of them.

But such films were also not afraid to scare us, to make us care about their characters by putting them in real danger. And here, Jungle Cruise sadly falls back on its corporate theme-park origins. It’s a safety-first kind of movie, seemingly too afraid to ever make us fear for our heroes. A jaguar that attacks early on quickly turns out to be Frank’s pet, Proxima (another aide in his many scams). It would probably constitute a spoiler to give more details about other elements that are initially presented as sources of fear but turn out ultimately to be harmless. (Even the supposedly psychopathic Prince Joachim comes off as weirdly cuddly at times, with Plemons playing him as a subdued bore. Why exactly is this movie set during WWI anyway? Were they afraid to make Joachim a Nazi?) It feels at times like the filmmakers are reluctant to suggest that the Amazon might actually be a dangerous place. Maybe that sort of thing makes for admirable messaging (does it?), but it certainly doesn’t quicken the pulse.

The exception to all this winds up proving the rule: When the aforementioned Lope de Aguirre (Edgar Ramirez) and his men, who all supposedly vanished upriver in the 16th century, come back as a ragtag supernatural phantom army to fight our heroes, they’re clearly meant to provide the menace that the film has been so lacking. And to be fair, a flashback to how they got their curse is one of the film’s highlights; if nothing else, it gives Collet-Serra an opportunity to briefly show off his horror chops. But once these villains enter the story, their presence, even in its finer details and twists, so recalls the far-superior Pirates of the Caribbean that we might wonder if we’re just watching something created on the same software as that earlier picture, only with a different set of features selected from the drop-down menus.

Even so, derivativeness and predictability aren’t always fatal flaws. Jungle Cruise could have been saved had it at least provided some decent comedy and romance. On the latter front, Johnson and Blunt don’t have much chemistry. The film has a good idea in positioning them as opposing temperaments — the more bickering, the more chance of a spark, cinematically speaking — but even that winds up being half-baked. In the end, they don’t argue all that much.

Over and over, we can see the far superior movie Jungle Cruise wants to be: a freewheeling, romantic, swashbuckling epic about a couple of beautiful, brave souls who bicker their way into each other’s hearts, all the while facing off against the many dangers of the jungle and a variety of villains both human and supernatural. But it is so not that movie. And the clarity of its aspirations just makes the film’s downfall that much more pathetic, like a baseball player pointing to the home run he’s about to hit and then completely whiffing and landing on his ass.

Meanwhile, Whitehall is given the thankless task of portraying what is supposedly Disney’s most “out” gay character yet. The film still plays it kind of coy: Talking to Frank one night about how he couldn’t get married, MacGregor says that he “had to tell the lady in question that I couldn’t accept the offer — or indeed any offer, given that my interests happily lay elsewhere.” He then adds, “Uncle threatened to disinherit me. Friends and family turned their backs, all because of who I love.” Maybe this could have been a touching character note, but it doesn’t actually do much to develop MacGregor; his confession seems to exist primarily to show what a decent guy Frank is in accepting him. MacGregor, meanwhile, remains the butt of many of the movie’s (mostly unfunny) jokes — a hopelessly vain dandy who pees himself at the first sign of danger. I’m not sure any of this is progress. The jungle might not kill you, but Jungle Cruise could kill your soul.

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Jungle Cruise Reviews

I think we would all agree to hop in a boat with these two as they take us on an adventure.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2023

The SUMMER ADVENTURE you all need to go on! With vibes from Raiders of the Lost Ark to Pirates of the Caribbean! this movie will bring a smile to your face the entire cruise.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Sometimes movies should exist to be entertainment, purely and simply. Jungle Cruise should have been that, and it’s a shame there was not enough charisma to keep it afloat.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Jungle Cruise is exactly what it makes itself out to be: a big-name summer blockbuster...

Full Review | Feb 23, 2023

A family adventure through familiar, albeit shallow, waters.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Feb 13, 2023

Any minor quibbles are outshone by the star power wattage generated by Johnson and Blunt. If Johnson is still the Most Electrifying Man In Entertainment, then Emily Blunt is a superconductor.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 12, 2022

Book your trip on Jungle Cruise now. It’s a first-class ticket.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 9, 2022

JUNGLE CRUISE (the movie) was based on "Jungle Cruise", a Disneyland ride, so I wasn't expecting much, and was definitely pleasantly surprised. All in all, this is a fun movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Sep 18, 2022

The script (from the trio of Michael Green, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa) is silly and light-hearted, reminiscent of the late-1960’s pulp you would find at a Saturday afternoon matinee.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 17, 2022

Inspired, too inspired, on its titular Disney attraction ride. Dwayne Johnson is practically the attraction's tour guide. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jul 18, 2022

Jungle Cruise manages to coast on the charm of its two leads, making it a fun, if somewhat forgettable, adventure.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | May 18, 2022

JUNGLE CRUISE is a really enjoyable retro action-adventure film for the entire family, that shines with its great stars, wonderful chemistry and a surprisingly good and always entertaining story.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 7, 2022

Despite the flaws, theres something about Jungle Cruise that just works. Its a traditional summer blockbuster that combines charming leads with enough adventure to keep everyone happy.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 3, 2022

Unlike the vast majority of other recent Disney Live-Action features, Jungle Cruise is a film easy to have a good time with.

Full Review | Feb 22, 2022

If theres a ride that the Jungle Cruise feels more like than the Jungle Cruise, its Pirates of the Caribbean. And sadly, I have to say that this is this movies biggest downfall.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Feb 16, 2022

No amount of money, not even the reported 200 million budget, can help Jungle Cruise avoid tasting like a hunk of processed meat from the Disney conveyor belt.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Feb 12, 2022

Jungle Cruise is passable light-hearted family entertainment.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 12, 2022

As far as these things go, this one isn't half-bad, and that's almost entirely due to the presence of Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 21, 2021

Successfully brings a beloved Disneyland ride to life.

Full Review | Nov 12, 2021

The scenery is beautiful and it is a fun ride along with Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson but it is no African Queen.

Full Review | Original Score: 5 | Oct 30, 2021

‘Jungle Cruise’ Review: Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt in Disney’s Bumptious Rom-Com Theme-Park Joyride

The two stars have an undeniable plucky chemistry in a fantasy adventure so rollicking it threatens to turn romance into one more special effect.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

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In “ Jungle Cruise ,” a Disney adventure that demonstrates how basing a movie on a theme-park ride may now be a more natural occurence than adapting it from a novel, Emily Blunt plays Dr. Lily Houghton, a London researcher-explorer who’s as fearless, in her demure way, as Indiana Jones, and Dwayne Johnson is Frank Wolff, the friendly huckster of a river-boat captain who ferries her down the Amazon at the height of World War I.

He wears a hat just like the one Humphrey Bogart wore in “The African Queen,” and she wears pants — which, of course, were an early adaptation of Katharine Hepburn’s. For anyone old enough, or old-movie-centered enough, to care (which is maybe five percent of this movie’s prospective audience), the banter between these two could be said to evoke Bogart and Hepburn — or, at least, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in “Romancing the Stone.” Frank, a charlatan with a chip on his shoulder, calls Lily “Pants” and tells godawful jokes. She call him “Skippy” and rolls her eyes. And as they go at each other with gusto and bite and a touch of venom, you can sit back and feel, at moments, like you’re at a romantic comedy.

But it’s like watching a romantic comedy while strapped to a roller-coaster with a VR headset on. “Jungle Cruise” is at once a love story, a made-for-4DX action movie, a “Pirates of the Caribbean”-style fairy tale featuring a ghostly conquistador (Edgar Ramirez) and his pewter-armored henchman with digital snakes slithering through their bodies, and God knows what else. Blunt, appealingly brash, makes mincemeat of Frank the lug but lets you know she likes him anyway, and Johnson knows how to deliver a genial putdown that still stings. They’ve got a chemistry, no doubt about it, but in a funny way the romantic pluck of “Jungle Cruise” plays like one more trick effect. You can practically touch the one-liners as they ping off the screen.

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I enjoyed the movie more than I did the two recent “Jumanji” films, because you can kind of pretend that there’s something at stake, and the director, Jaume Collet-Serra, stages it all with a certain breathless bravura. Leaving the dock in the Brazilian jungle where Frank plays P.T. Barnum to gullible tourists, our heroes set off in his barely seaworthy steamboat, only to have to get out of the way of a torpedo launched by Prince Joachim, a Teutonic megalomaniac played by Jesse Plemons with a smirky flourish. The ship plows right into Frank’s docking station, which blows up real good.

There’s a turbulent sequence in which the boat speeds toward a waterfall, and a funny one that fools us into thinking, for a moment, that the movie is going to exploit the woefully outdated stereotype of a “primitive” tribe of cannibals wearing skull masks. (It’s actually mocking it.) Lily has brought her brother, MacGregor, along for the ride, and he’s a pampered dandy who think it’s not dinner unless you’re wearing a dinner jacket. He’s played by Jack Whitehall, in a pinpoint performance that benefits from not having to repress the implication that the character is gay, though it might have benefited even more if his coming-out speech to Frank didn’t dance around the subject nearly as torturously as the old repression.

“Jungle Cruise” is a movie that implicitly asks: What’s wrong with a little good old-fashioned escapism? The answer is: Absolutely nothing, and “Jungle Cruise” is old-fashioned, expect that it pelts the audience with entertainment in such a lively yet bumptious way that at times you may wish you were wearing protective gear. Lily has in her possession a mystical arrowhead, which everyone wants, because it’s the totem that will lead her to the Tears of the Moon, a legendary tree (it’s like the Fountain of Youth) with magical healing properties. That sounds like a Disney MacGuffin, and is, except what struck me after a while is that the real preoccupation of “Jungle Cruise” isn’t romance, or even adventure, but metamorphosis. Tree vines grow and wrap themselves around historic explorers; a fearsome tiger is revealed to be a pussycat; a key character turns out to be 400 years old; a theme-park ride turns into a love story and then back again. All that remains unchanged is the price of an oversize box of Raisinets.

Reviewed at AMC Lincoln Square, New York, July 26, 2021. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 127 MIN.

• Production: A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures release of a Davis  Entertainment Company, Seven Bucks/Flynn Picture Co. production. Producers: John Davis, John Fox, Beau Flynn, Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia, Hiram Garcia. Executive producers: Scott Sheldon, Doug Merrifield.
• Crew: Director: Jaume Collet-Serra. Screenplay: Michael Green, Glenn Ficarra, John Requa. Camera: Flavio Labiano. Editor: Joel Negron. Music: James Newton Howard.
• With: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Édgar Ramírez, Jack Whitehall, Jesse Plemons, Paul Giamatti, Veronica Falcón, Dani Rovira, Quim Gutierrez.

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Jungle Cruise Review

24 Jul 2020

Jungle Cruise

Sometimes, it’s not the reboots and remakes that make you despair of Hollywood’s lack of originality. Sometimes it’s a theoretically original film like this, another attempt to turn a Disneyland ride into a big-screen franchise. As you watch Jaume Collet-Serra ’s adventure, you’re haunted by the unpleasant feeling that this is a supposedly fun thing that’s already been done before. It’s only thanks to Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt that the result holds the attention, and it’s a credit to them that it’s entertaining at all.

The ride that inspired this is a slightly insipid glide past animatronic animals. For the big screen we’re in the Amazon in 1916, where Captain Frank (Johnson) is engaged to take scientist Lily (Blunt) on a hunt for “ el flor de la luna ”, a mythical flower that can cure all ills. Her brother MacGregor ( Jack Whitehall , about whom the less said the better) is along for the ride as they follow in the footsteps of conquistador Aguirre ( Edgar Ramirez ).

It’s not badly done by any means, yet it's deathly derivative.

If you enjoyed Rachel Weisz’s plucky librarian in The Mummy , you’ll love Blunt’s plucky scientist, also tottering about on a library ladder and railing against the sexist scholars who won’t grant her the academic recognition she deserves. Johnson’s scoundrel captain, meanwhile, may recall a certain Corellian smuggler, or a Caribbean pirate. He shares a loose moral sense with both, drives a beaten-up craft that he claims is the fastest in the sector, and is in hock to a rich local boss ( Paul Giamatti , wasted). And it’s a shame that Ramirez’s Aguirre doesn’t draw from Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski to add some demented intensity, because those flashbacks play more like a limp Pirates Of The Caribbean .

It’s not badly done by any means, with lovely animal effects, big, well-staged chases and lots of antics for Blunt and Johnson. Yet it’s deathly derivative. Action beats are lifted from Raiders Of The Lost Ark , music comes (mystifyingly) courtesy of Metallica (in collaboration with composer James Newton Howard), and there are endless references to The Mummy . Orphan filmmaker Collet-Serra manages to inject some nuance into the portrayal of an Amazonian populace, led by Veronica Falcón’s Trader Sam, and gives Jesse Plemons an entertainingly outrageous accent as a German princeling. The script even pulls off a surprise or two — though one of those, involving Whitehall’s character, is horribly misconceived.

But with a budget this big and a crew this talented, the film shouldn’t be this reliant on Blunt and Johnson’s bickering to hold the attention. In his fourth jungle outing (after Welcome To The… , Journey 2 and Jumanji ), His Rockness gives good world-weary, and Blunt’s bossiness sparks off him nicely, in a dynamic straight out of The African Queen . They don’t have much romantic chemistry but they do make for a fun odd couple, and at times they’re the only thing stopping you from throwing yourself to the piranhas. When did on-screen adventure start to feel so planned?

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• Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Summary Inspired by the famous Disneyland theme park ride, Disney’s Jungle Cruise is an adventure-filled, rollicking thrill-ride down the Amazon with wisecracking skipper Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson) and intrepid researcher Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt). Lily travels from London, England to the Amazon jungle and enlists Frank’s questionable se ... Read More

Directed By : Jaume Collet-Serra

Written By : Michael Green, Glenn Ficarra, John Requa, John Norville, Josh Goldstein

Jungle Cruise

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‘Jungle Cruise’: The Rock and Emily Blunt Go Up the Disney River, Without a Paddle

By David Fear

Blame Johnny Depp.

I mean, listen, feel free to blame the actor for any number of things , if you want. But specifically, in terms of riot-act reading, let’s go back to 2003, when Mr. Depp slapped on a head scarf, trotted out his best Keef Richards wobble and slur, and turned what felt like a Disney Hail-Mary I.P. cash-in into a cash cow. No one expected a movie based on an amusement park ride based on creaky, age-old seafaring stories to give birth to a popular franchise; no one expected a movie about 18th century pirates to show up in the early part of the 21st century, period. (What is this, the Watchmen universe ?)

Depp is responsible for turning the Pirates of the Caribbean films into hits, even when the series slipped into diminishing-returns territory. More importantly, he helped to prove a Mouse House theorem: When it comes to licensing, exploiting and rebooting, why stop at your best-known characters? Find the right actor, and you can sell your park properties’ greatest hits as intellectual properties too. If you can hire a better-than-decent director and keep the pace frantic, all the better. The movies then direct customers back to the park, and the circle of l̶i̶f̶e̶ commerce continues. The question was not whether this was the beginning of a trend but what the next “title” would be and how soon we’d be E-ticketing to a theater near us.

The reprieve lasted longer than we thought, enough to lull us into a false sense of security. Maybe it’s unfair to blame the ghost of Jack Sparrow and the Pirates boom-bust of yore for Jungle Cruise . But dear Walt in the heavens, the shadow of that series looms large over this attempt to sell the Magic Kingdom’s vintage, colonialism-a-go-go boat ride as the next big endless-summer-movie thing. To be fair, so too does the specter of the Indiana Jones films, The African Queen, steampunk, old-school Werner Herzog, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rudyard Kipling, Jules Verne, the entire previous filmography of the Rock, that book on Ponce de Leon you forgot to return to your library in fourth grade and every boys’ adventure ever written. Still: the wisecracking, trickster rascal? The hyper-capable and social-sexism-thwarting heroine? The mystical, supernatural villains, and their imperialistic, human bad-guy counterpart? The set pieces that update bits of ye olde derring-do, often digitally and occasionally successfully? You’ve seen this film. Only the hats, the source material’s location in the park and the size of the biceps have changed.

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Stream Jungle Cruise on Disney+

First, your lovable scamp of a skipper: His name is Frank Wolff, but feel free to call him Dwayne Johnson. This is a great example of what a movie star, a real one, does when you hire them: gives you their screen persona and molds it to fit the container without changing the essential recipe. It’s the one big difference between this and other Disney’s other big cinéma du amusement park entry, in that Depp injected everything an odd sense of unpredictability and Johnson gives us the reassuring feeling we’re watching a Dwayne Johnson movie. Except this time, it happens to be 1916, we’re deep in the Brazilian rain forests, and the star is smiling instead of seriously scowling. Wolff is a tour guide who runs his trusty boat up and down the Amazon for gullible tourists, which — yup — is distinguished by the captain’s facepalm-inspiring banter. Maybe you forgot for a nanosecond that the movie is based on the ride distinguished by a running commentary of puns ranging from bad to very bad to “make it stop, make it stop!!” Anyone who’s been to Disneyland in the past 50 years will recognize the jokes Johnson tells to his hostages (sorry, “customers”). The meta-gag is that even folks in 1916 thought these groaners were god-awful.

Meanwhile, in Merry Olde England, a young man named MacGregor Houghton (Jack Whitehall) is making a plea to ye olde stuffy historical organization to let him access an arrowhead recently found in the Amazon. This artifact, about to be tucked away in their archives, is allegedly the key to unlocking “the Tears of the Moon” — bright flowers found blossoming only on the mystical Tree of Life, and the obsession/downfall of Spanish conquistador Don Lope de Aguirre (Edgar Ramírez). He’s not the Houghton to keep an eye on, however: That would be MacGregor’s sister, Lily ( Emily Blunt ), the headstrong adventurer of the family. She’s keen to prove that the rumors surrounding the magical healing properties of this foliage are true, and thus cure all ills. Yet another party, Germany’s Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons), would also like the arrowhead. There’s a world war going, you see. Having access to the tree’s bounty might give his nation the winning edge.

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We get one rousing set piece involving Blunt and Plemons competing to liberate the arrowhead from its crate — a jumble of feints and moving parts that director Jaume Collet-Serra smooths out nicely; even if you didn’t know he’s logged time putting Liam Neeson through his Action Gramps paces , you see why he got the job — before everyone meets up in South America, and everything settles into a well-worn, familiar Jungle Adventure 101 groove. It turns out that Blunt’s tart apple crisp of a comic performance pairs nicely with Johnson’s beefcake served with a side of ham. The actress, especially, seems to thrive in playing the Hepburn to Johnson’s buffed-up Bogart. (When you watch her spring into action, and see how well the movie plays to her vulnerability and her fearlessness, you remember that this is the filmmaker who also gave us Blake Lively’s alpha-female-in-peril in The Shallows. ) Blunt’s already proven to be a great physical screen performer as well as an expressive one, versatile enough to go deep or stay breezy, and even when she leans heavily on righteous indignation, there’s a verve she brings to all of this. It rubs off on her screen partner, too. She calls him “Skippy.” He calls her “Pants.” (Because she wears pants, and is also a lady.) They can almost jointly convince you this is a cruise worth taking. Almost.

Other than that, well…Plemons’ evil Saxon may worship the Kaiser instead of the Fürher, but he’s a screen Nazi by any other name, and the mustache-twirling giddiness he brings to this stock villain soon dissipates quicker than a cow leg in a piranha pool. Paul Giamatti drops by with a that’s-ah-spicy-meatball accent, a gold tooth and a vibe that scream “my summer house needs renovating, too.” One character’s interest in then-verboten alternative lifestyles doubles as both sympathetic representation and gay-panic-driven punchline, leaving you with a chicken v. egg dilemma over what came first in script rewrites. And the ride’s legacy of blithe exoticism butting up against Tarzan-grade stereotypes — to quote a bit player here, “that booga-booga nonsense” — gets dealt with in a way that suggests a box has been summarily ticked off a previous-grievances list. It wants to have your cannibal-natives cake and critique it too, at least in theory.

There are a few elements in Jungle Cruise that would constitute being labeled as spoilers, but the fact that the movie ends ready and revved up for a sequel is not one of them. Disney would very much like lightning to strike twice, and you can feel moments here — notably when Aguirre and some conquistador comrades return in a, shall we say, more “natural” postmortem state — where they’re purposefully nudging you: “Hey, remember how much you loved those early Pirates movies? So why not give this a try as well?” The ride they’re really asking you to go on, however, isn’t a reprise of their hokey upriver excursion. It’s something closer to an amusement-park attraction named Generic Blockbuster Cruise, where you slowly glide past a bunch of prefab set-ups — over there you’ll see some thrills, look out on your right for some spills and chills — and the whole thing moves inexorably forward on a track, while a skipper cracks the same corny jokes. It’s a decent enough way to kill time once if the lines are short. You won’t be particularly be rushing to jump back on the ride again.

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‘Jungle Cruise’ Review: Amazon Subprime

Not even Emily Blunt, doing her best Katharine Hepburn impression, can keep this leaky boat ride afloat.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

Like Vogon poetry , the plot of Disney’s “Jungle Cruise” is mostly unintelligible and wants to beat you into submission. Manically directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, this latest derivation of a theme-park ride shoots for the fizzy fun of bygone romantic adventures like “ Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981) . That it misses has less to do with the heroic efforts of its female lead than with the glinting artifice of the entire enterprise.

Emily Blunt plays Lily, a sassy British botanist weary of being disrespected by London’s chauvinistic scientific community. The Great War is in full swing, but Lily is obsessed with reaching the Amazon jungle to search for a flower that’s rumored to cure all ills. A roguish riverboat captain named Frank (Dwayne Johnson) is hired, and soon Lily and her fussy brother (Jack Whitehall) — whose discomfort with all things Amazonian is a running gag — are heading upriver into a host of digital dangers.

As snakes, cannibals and maggoty supernatural beings rattle around the frame, “Jungle Cruise” exhibits a blatantly faux exoticism that feels as flat as the forced frisson between its two leads. The pace is hectic, the dialogue boilerplate (“The natives speak of this place with dread”), the general busyness a desperate dance for our attention. Jesse Plemons is briefly diverting as a nefarious German prince, and Edgar Ramírez pops up as a rotting Spanish conquistador named Aguirre. Werner Herzog must be thrilled.

Buffeted by a relentless score and supported by a small town’s worth of digital artists, “Jungle Cruise” is less directed than whipped to a stiff peak before collapsing into a soggy mess.

“Everything you see wants to kill you,” Frank tells his passengers. Actually, I think it just wants to take your money.

Jungle Cruise Rated PG-13 for chaste kissing and bloodless fighting. Running time 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters and on Disney+ .

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Jungle Cruise (2021)

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Jungle Cruise

• Action/Adventure , Comedy , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

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In Theaters

• July 30, 2021
• Dwayne Johnson as Frank Wolff; Emily Blunt as Lily Houghton; Jack Whitehall as MacGregor Houghton; Edgar Ramírez as Aguirre; Jesse Plemons as Prince Joachim; Paul Giamatti as Nilo; Veronica Falcón as Trader Sam

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• Jaume Collet-Serra

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• Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Movie Review

Conquistadors were suckers for a good legend.

They scoured the New World looking for El Dorado. They discovered Florida seeking the Fountain of Youth. And one intrepid Spaniard—a fellow named Aguirre—even dared brave the mighty Amazon in search of the Tears of the Moon, petals from a hidden tree that would supposedly cure any disease.

Those petals would’ve been nice, given all the diseases that Conquistadors introduced to the New World, but no matter. Aguirre and his cohorts disappeared in those Brazilian jungles long ago, and the Tears of the Moon faded into barely remembered myth—a bedtime story for a few, perhaps, but nothing more.

But Lily Houghton and her brother, MacGregor, heard those bedtime stories and believed . And Lily believes something else, too: That she can succeed where Aguirre and everyone else has failed.

And given that the year’s 1916—the middle of the Great War, when millions of people are dying from battle and disease—the Tears have never been more needed.

Lily has maps of important twisty, turny Amazon tributaries—maps allegedly made by Aguirre’s own cartographer. Soon she has an important arrowhead, too, which she thinks may be the key to unlocking the Tears’ centuries-old secret. Now all she and her brother need is a boat captain to take them upriver, through the mysterious and perilous jungle. Someone brave. Strong. Honest.

Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

Frank Wolff isn’t honest. In fact, he makes his living lying. He takes gullible tourists upriver and shows them the (ahem) wonders and terrors of the Amazon, be they fearsome headhunters (actors in Frank’s employ) or horrifying hippopotami (not native to Brazil) or the skeletonized remains of dead conquistadors (well, the skeletons look real enough). He glories in terrible puns and proudly shows his guests the “eighth wonder of the world”—a pitiful little manmade waterfall that Frank sails behind. “The backside of water!” he proudly exclaims to his less-than-impressed clientele.

Why, when he first meets Lily, Frank is even lying about being Frank . She finds him in the office of another (much more successful) riverboat captain, apparently picking a lock. She mistakes him for the (much more successful) riverboat captain, and who is Frank to say otherwise?

Still, Frank is roughly the size of a boat himself, which suggests he’s strong. He must be brave, too, living as he does in this little-explored jungle. And he works cheap.

But the dangers Frank, Lily and MacGregor face are no lie. To get to where the Tears of the Moon supposedly can be found, they’ll have to brave wild animals, fearsome rapids and maybe even a German U-Boat or two.

And the deep, dark jungle hides a secret, as well. Those old, lost conquistadors might not be quite dead yet. Yes, the Tears of the Moon make a tantilizing bedtime story—one that Lily banks on being much more. But before this jungle cruise is over, she might be shedding a few tears of her own.

Positive Elements

Lily wants to find the Tears of the Moon for a whole bunch of reasons: To redeem her family name; to mark herself as a scientist of note; and because it’d be fun. But above all, she believes the Tears can save lives—lives that, at this juncture in history, are being lost at a staggering pace. “I don’t have to know someone to care,” she tells Frank.

The riverboat captain respects that. But for him, he needs to be closer to someone to truly care for them—and he’s been looking for that connection for a while now. “One person to care about in this world—that’s enough for me.” Which is also a nice sentiment.

All that caring leads all of them (MacGregor, too) to take risks for each other—even to the point of making the ultimate sacrifice.

In flashback, we also see an indigenous group show great kindness to a handful of conquistadors. And we learn that at least one of those conquistadors sought out the Tears for a pretty good reason of his own.

Spiritual Elements

The Tears themselves were a gift from the gods, it’s suggested, and Frank named his boat after the goddess of the moon (Quilla, an actual Incan deity). The history of the tears is filled with magical happenings and elements, too, including a very effective curse. Part of that curse involves an element of undead immortality. Apart from that, though, there is little apparent hope of an afterlife, but rather eternal rest.

Lily spies some Brazilian dolphins. Frank cautions her to not look them in the eyes: Those dolphins, he says—repeating a real Brazilian legend—are said to be shapeshifters who might just steal you away. “If you believe in legends,” he cautions, “you should believe in curses, too.” Indigenous tribespeople don masks made out of skulls, and the leader has painted an eye on her hand—suggesting an adherence to some sort of mysterious religion.

There’s a reference to the Garden of Eden. It’s said that Lily wants to be the “Darwin of flowers,” a reference to the naturalist who popularized the notion of evolution.

Sexual Content

Before diving into water, Lily strips down to her modest 1916-era skivvies. (“Are you wearing pants under your pants?” Frank asks.) We also see some indiginous folks go shirtless or (in the case of women) shoulder-baring garb. Life-saving, underwater swaps of oxygen resemble a pair of lip-to-lip kisses. Some banter over treating a wound—with Frank asking Lily if it’s her “first time”—is filled with possible light double entendres.

MacGregor, Lily’s brother, is apparently gay. He tells Frank that he had to break the truth to a would-be female match that his “interests lie elsewhere,” and that he would’ve been disinherited and completely ostracized from society for “who I loved,” had it not been for Lily. This is the only reference to MacGregor’s sexual leanings, and it could sail over some younger viewers’ heads. Yet, the context of the conversation might make it more likely that those younger viewers will ask questions later.

Violent Content

The movie opens in earnest in London, where a villain quickly and cartoonishly dispatches a number of bearded scientists. We see no blood, but given the blades involved, there’s no doubt as to the fates of these unfortunates. Someone nearly tumbles to her death during the melee, as well, but instead lands safely on a double-decker bus.

But if London’s a dangerous place, it doesn’t hold a candle to the Amazon. We see creatures nab other creatures, only to get snatched up in turn—the suggestion being that pretty much everything’s subject to being gobbled up and eaten. People are stabbed and shot and nearly drowned, and a couple of unfortunates fall from terrific heights, bouncing off branches and rocks on the way down. Someone is skewered by a pretty nasty blade (we see the end jut out from the other side) but survives—and someone else is forced to pull the blade out. Someone is crushed by a falling rock.

A leopard attacks Frank and bites his wrist. He and the animal wrestle in a bar for a bit (threatened by a nearby tarantula and scorpion, who just minutes before had been locked in an apparent fight-to-the-death). Someone’s foot is seriously injured. A man is thwacked by a golf club. A couple of guys get whacked in their privates (momentarily disabling them). Men burn their hands. People comically run into various hard surfaces, knocking them down or, in one case, plunging from a zip line. People are bitten by snakes, and at least a couple seem to die from the bites. Sunburns look pretty painful. Animals are shot and caught for food. We hear some joking references to beheadings. Piranhas attack Frank.

[ Spoiler Warning ] We should mention those undead conquistadors. They commit plenty of acts of violence, to be sure, but more than that, these guys are just plain scary. Each seems to be cursed as a different jungle avatar: The body of one is alive with slithering snakes, some of which slide out of his skin (which sometimes splits rather grotesquely). Another seems built partly out of honeycombs, with portions of his body missing. If you remember the undead pirates from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, you can get a sense of the level of ookiness we’re talking about here, but something to be aware of.

Crude or Profane Language

Someone uses the German equivalent of the s-word. We hear one “h—” and about three misuses of God’s name. The movie purposefully calls to mind a harsher profanity, though, when a character rejects an invitation to a prestigious educational body—telling its members that they can “shove it up your association.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Frank imbibes quite a bit (most likely a nod to Humphry Bogart’s hard-drinking character in The African Queen). He quaffs liquid from a glass flask he always has with him, and he partakes elsewhere, too (ordering, for instance, “two beers and two steaks”). When MacGregor tries to bring seemingly dozens of trunks along, Frank throws most overboard but pointedly keeps the trunk full of liquor.

Frank’s pet leopard laps up some of the alcohol from one of those bottles (wine or port, most likely) and gets drunk. During a visit with an indigenous tribe, MacGregor seems quite impressed with the alcohol they give him, until he learns …

Other Negative Elements

… that the alcohol in question is, in Frank’s words, “fermented spit.”

Three characters (including the leopard) vomit, either on the boat deck or over the rail. Frank tells Lily that she can take a bath in the Amazon itself—slyly mentioning that he warmed it up for her earlier (that is, urinated in its waters). When Lily gets splashed, Frank looks at her trousers and says, “Looks like you wet your pants, Pants (his nickname for her).”

Lots of characters—including the good guys—lie and steal here. Indeed, the arrowhead that Lily needs to complete its quest is snatched from its apparently rightful owners (an act she would frame as one of “liberation”).

The inspiration for Jungle Cruise isn’t found in ancient legend or turn-of-the-century storybook, but rather a ride—the beloved Jungle Cruise ride found at most Disney parks.

The ride itself is considered a classic. It opened along with the original Disneyland way back in 1955, and countless guests line up to experience its charm—the animatronic animals, the wisecracking captains, the “backside of water”—every year. And while it has undergone its share of revisions (redesigning the boats and stripping the scenery of some uncomfortably racist elements), the ride that 7-year-olds experience today isn’t that much different from the ride their parents might’ve loved decades before. You could argue that the Jungle Cruise, the ride, is timeless.

The movie? Not so much.

Paradoxically, it embraces a few truly timeless films: It definitely exhibits a strong Indiana Jones vibe, and the characters Lily and Frank strongly echo (in word and garb) the characters from one of the ride’s big sources of inspiration: The African Queen .

But this Jungle Cruise —despite being set more than a century ago and paying homage to a ride nearly 70 years old—is a product of our secularly moralistic age. It’s concerned with issues that our society is concerned about, from feminism to the environment to LGBTQ issues.

That’s not all bad, of course. But it does stamp Jungle Cruise with a “best buy” date, because what society values shifts as society itself does. The morals culture embraces today may feel retro and even embarrassing 40 years from now. And even in this age, Jungle Cruise can feel a bit proselytizing.

In addition, the movie has more content issues than you might expect. While its pretty innocuous when it comes to skin and sensuality, Jungle Cruise is surprisingly violent and pretty scary. And I’ve not seen so much drinking in a film designed for families since Bogey and Hepburn sailed up the Congo on the African Queen .

The film boasts some delightfully hideous puns and stars a couple of charismatic Disney vets in Emily Blunt and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. It can be fun. But in many ways, Jungle Cruise sails off course. And for some families, some unexpected rapids loom downstream.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Jungle Cruise review – the Rock’s Disney theme-park actioner takes predictable turns

Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson are romancing riverboat adventurers in a ride-turned-film that quickly becomes bland

T he Jungle Cruise theme-park ride is a riverboat trip that Disneyland visitors have been queuing up for since the 1950s: an old-timey craft travelling down an artificial jungle river, with a jolly captain pointing out animatronic animals lurching out of the artificial undergrowth. Now it’s been adapted into a blandly inoffensive piece of generic entertainment: screenwriters Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (who once gave us Bad Santa and I Love You Phillip Morris) have mashed up The African Queen with Raiders of the Lost Ark, and with what I admit is a surreal splash of Aguirre, Wrath of God.

It’s lively enough for the first 20 minutes. The year is 1916, and Emily Blunt plays Lily Houghton, a haughty yet idealistic British scientist, much patronised by the male establishment in London. She imperiously hires a riverboat in Brazil to find the much-rumoured “Tree of Life” somewhere in the jungle. Its captain is a cynical-with-a-heart-of-gold rogue called Frank Wolff, man-mountainishly played by Dwayne Johnson. After the traditional meet-cute, their growing romance plays off the comedy turn provided by Jack Whitehall, playing the other passenger: Lily’s foppish, neurotic younger brother MacGregor. At one stage, Whitehall’s prissy, wussy Englishman explains to Dwayne Johnson that he is gay – or rather, he says something indirect about being not as other men, and the subject is never raised again, Edwardian reticence dovetailing nicely with Disney family values. It is a stereotype that Walt himself might have recognised, while also approving of the obvious heterosexuality of Frank with his muscles, boots and sailor’s cap.

The trio encounter all sorts of shrink-wrapped CGI Disney adventures, facing off against evil German nobleman Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons) who wants the Tree of Life’s powers to boost the German army, and the ghostly Aguirre (Edgar Ramírez) who went searching for it in the 16th century. The spark that was there in the opening section disappears and the film splutters out into something directionless and derivative and dull.

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• Emily Blunt
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Review: Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt are fun, but not enough to make ‘Jungle Cruise’ see-worthy

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The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials .

Starting this Friday, if you’re willing to spend the time (a little more than two hours) and money (either the price of a theater ticket or a $29.99 Disney+ Premier Access fee), you can watch the new “Jungle Cruise” movie, a technologically newfangled, dramatically old-fashioned action-adventure inspired by the long-running Disney theme-park ride. Alternately, in much less time (eight minutes) and for no money at all, you could watch a video recording of said theme-park ride on YouTube.

I don’t mean to suggest that these are equivalent experiences exactly. Personally I prefer the YouTube version, which may have been filmed in a giant Anaheim water tank festooned with imported plants and mechanical elephants, yet still somehow manages to offer up the less artificial, more persuasively inhabited jungle scenery of the two. Enthusiasts of Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt and the color orange, however, will probably want to spring for the longer, shinier, digitally enhanced version, perhaps hoping that, like Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies — the first one , anyway — it will succeed in turning a slow-moving boat ride into an energetic, nostalgia-tickling cinematic diversion.

And to be sure, this “Jungle Cruise,” serviceably directed by Jaume Collet-Serra ( “The Shallows” ), does reproduce some of the ride’s signature pleasures in elaborate computer-generated form: the leafy overgrowth, the exotic wildlife, the gently flowing stream. By that I also mean the stream of puns rattled off by the skipper, who is played by Johnson. That he represents an upgrade over the average Disney park employee — no offense, average Disney park employee — is hard to deny. And whether you’re wordplay-averse or (like me) think the whole enterprise should have been retitled “Pungle Cruise,” the mischievous wit that has always undergirded Johnson’s brawny physicality serves him well in this department. What a dorky, deadpan delight to hear him say things like “toucan play that game” or point out that certain rocks are “taken for granite.” (Certain Rocks too, surely.)

Being a full-length feature, of course, “Jungle Cruise” does have to traffic in niceties like plot, character and mythology, even if the result, scripted by Michael Green, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, is derivative to the point of desultory. Johnson is Frank, the wily captain of a rickety Amazon River tourist trap, trying to eke out a semi-honest living amid stiff competition from a local bigwig (Paul Giamatti). Blunt plays Frank’s latest passenger, Lily Houghton, an apt name for a high-minded English botanist who’s trying to find the “Tears of the Moon,” a legendary flower known for its astonishing healing powers. Fate brings these two singularly stubborn individuals together for a long and bickersome journey downriver, pitting Frank’s cynical self-interest against Lily’s naive idealism and pairing Blunt’s reliably withering eye rolls with Johnson’s famously expressive eyebrows.

The chemistry generated by all this ocular sparring is not negligible, and it powers this waterlogged star vehicle through its busy, semicoherent action sequences and squalls of narrative incident. It’s 1916 and World War I is raging, which at least partly explains Jesse Plemons’ over-the-top turn as Prince Joachim, a mustachioed German villain who will butcher any person or vowel that stands in his way. He’s determined to harvest the Tears of the Moon before Lily does, even if it means steering a U-boat down the Amazon in hot pursuit. And hot is the operative word, given the sweltering Brazilian temperatures, hinted at by the oppressive ochre tones of Flavio Labiano’s digital cinematography and the sweat beads you can practically see clinging to Paco Delgado’s costumes.

Speaking of which: Also along for the ride is Lily’s brother, MacGregor (Jack Whitehall), who has dapper tastes, packs way too many suitcases and, as the movie seldom tires of reminding us, is comically ill equipped for any kind of rugged living or heterosexual entanglement. But worry not: Once it’s done poking fun at an effeminate male stereotype, the script swoops in with a cautious coming-out monologue perfectly tailored to generate a fresh round of headlines celebrating and/or criticizing Disney’s latest LGBTQ milestone. This being Disney, of course, we’re quite a long way from, say, the family-unfriendly subversions of “I Love You Phillip Morris,” Ficarra and Requa’s joyous 2010 comedy of queer awakening. Even within these ostensibly punny parameters, the only jungle cruising that goes on here is all too literal.

Still, MacGregor’s blip of a backstory isn’t the only instance in which this early 20th century epic nods to a decidedly 21st century audience. As my Times colleague Todd Martens recently examined in a thoughtful, deeply reported piece , the Jungle Cruise ride, a Disneyland fixture since the park opened in 1955, recently underwent a significant overhaul that jettisoned its racist depictions of Indigenous people. The movie, through some clever tinkering, accomplishes something similar, turning its gallery of spear-brandishing headhunters into a sly joke at the expense of Western colonialist assumptions. The real villains here are Plemons’ power-hungry prince and his army of undead Spanish conquistadors, one of whom (played by Édgar Ramirez) is none other than Aguirre himself. That historical nod conjures some wishful Herzogian overtones in a movie otherwise conceived under the spell of “The African Queen” (itself a design influence on the original ride), Indiana Jones, “Romancing the Stone” and other films from an earlier era of cinematic adventure seeking.

To watch those films again may be to plunge back into a world of cheap jokes and retrograde attitudes. But it’s also to be reminded of what mainstream American movies looked like before the era of wall-to-wall visual effects, the kind that’ve turned the modern blockbuster into a shiny, increasingly soulless and sometimes flat-out ugly proposition. “Romancing the Stone” had live snakes and snapping alligators and an appreciably real sense of peril; this movie has a digitally fabricated jaguar, among other computer-generated creepy-crawlies, and not a real thrill or scare among them. “Jungle Cruise,” despite its more-than-capable leads and its much-vaunted attention to detail and verisimilitude, never feels transporting in the way that even mediocre blockbusters were once able to muster. It’s less an expedition than a simulation, a dispatch from a wild yet oddly pristine world where seeing is never close to believing.

‘Jungle Cruise’

Rating: PG-13, for sequences of adventure violence Running time: 2 hours, 7 minutes Playing: Starts July 30 in general release; also available as PVOD on Disney+

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Jungle Cruise

July 30, 2021

Action, Adventure, Comedy

Join fan favorites Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt for the adventure of a lifetime on Disney’s Jungle Cruise, a rollicking thrill-ride down the Amazon with wisecracking skipper Frank Wolff and intrepid researcher Dr. Lily Houghton. Lily travels from London, England to the Amazon jungle and enlists Frank’s questionable services to guide her downriver on La Quila—his ramshackle-but-charming boat. Lily is determined to uncover an ancient tree with unparalleled healing abilities—possessing the power to change the future of medicine. Thrust on this epic quest together, the unlikely duo encounters innumerable dangers and supernatural forces, all lurking in the deceptive beauty of the lush rainforest. But as the secrets of the lost tree unfold, the stakes reach even higher for Lily and Frank and their fate—and mankind’s—hangs in the balance.

Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 2h 7min Release Date: July 30, 2021

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Join fan favorites Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt for the adventure of a lifetime on Disney’s JUNGLE CRUISE, a rollicking thrill-ride down the Amazon with wisecracking skipper Frank Wolff and intrepid researcher Dr. Lily Houghton.

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Review: 'Jungle Cruise' is made from spare parts of better movies but kids will love it

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Emily “millennial Mary Poppins” Blunt knock themselves out in “Jungle Cruise” to keep kids wowed with excitement as everything from headhunters to snapping piranhas go on the attack.

Jungle Cruise

Join Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt for the adventure of a lifetime on Disney's "Jungle Cruise," a rollicking thrill-ride down the Amazon.

The movie, now playing in theaters and streaming on Disney+ Premier Access , is based on a Disney theme-park ride that’s been at it since -- wait for it --1955. That was just a few years after Walt Disney himself watched Humphrey Bogart skipper Katharine Hepburn down river in “The African Queen” and felt inspired to build the still-thriving attraction.

“Jungle Cruise” is nowhere near the league of that film classic. It’s a goofball throwaway that just wants to give family audiences a thrill ride down the Amazon, and it begs to be compared with another Disney excursion, “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

And that’s the problem.

“Jungle Cruise” borrows so heavily from “Pirates,” not to mention “The Mummy” and the incomparable “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” that it’s basically a knockoff. Johnson is a musclebound charmer, but small potatoes next to Johnny Depp, who swanned so deliciously through the role of pirate Jack Sparrow that he won an Oscar nomination.

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Acting awards are not in the cards for “Jungle Cruise ,” though that’ll be no big whoop to preteens who manage to circumvent the film’s inexplicable PG-13 rating. Set in 1916, two years into World War I, the movie is built to distract young’uns with all-stops-out special effects.

Johnson plays Frank Wolff, the captain of a ramshackle riverboat who offers the cheapest jungle cruises in Brazil -- plus a nonstop flow of groan-worthy puns.

“I used to work in an orange juice factory, but I got canned,” Wolff says at one point.

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Blunt has it worse. As British scientist Lily Houghton, a female Indiana Jones who shocks society by wearing pants, she is stuck in an exposition dump of an opening scene about why Houghton and her fussy brother, MacGregor (Jack Whitehall), need to chug down the Amazon.

Houghton is in search of flower petals from an ancient tree, called Tears of the Moon, which can only be found after Houghton steals a sacred arrowhead containing a map that will lead her to there. Even a single, falling petal is said to cure any illness or break any curse.

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It’s all just an excuse for director Jaume Collet-Serra, who pitted Blake Lively against an angry shark in “The Shallows,” to lead Wolff and Houghton through a series of rousing perils. Houghton's brother doesn’t do much, though his coming-out to Frank would have raised eyebrows a century ago.

Wolff and Houghton interrupt their budding romance to fight off Joachim (hammed to the hilt by Jesse Plemons), a mad German prince in a submarine, and Aguirre (Edgar Ramirez), a Spanish conquistador who’s been undead for 400 years and looks like it.

Young audiences may go “ewww” at Wolff and Houghton's awkward smooching, but they’ll perk up at their near-death experiences in treacherous rapids and with poison snakes. The real scene-stealer is a photorealistic jaguar named Proxima, who becomes everyone’s favorite pet.

“Jungle Cruise” is made up of spare parts from better movies and at over two-hours in length, it’ll be tough on short attention spans. On the plus side, it is way better than “Haunted Mansion” and “Tomorrowland,” other Disney rides that morphed into movies.

Amazingly, Johnson and Blunt still sell it. He calls her “Pants” and she dubs him “Skippy,” nicknames they both hate. But their natural warmth as performers humanize characters built from flimsy cardboard.

“Jungle Cruise" may be dim, dopey and derivative, but the kids will love it, and like the Metallica song in the film, “nothing else matters.”

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Ethan hawke on his flannery o’connor biopic ‘wildcat’: “i don’t know who cares about literature anymore … but i know i do”.

• ‘The Fall Guy’ Tripping To $28M Opening – Saturday AM Update

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SATURDAY AM: Universal’s The Fall Guy isn’t so strong, and nobody is really shocked.

While it was projected to do at least $30M, and it’s coming in at $28M, this is the range for original action comedies, even when they star Ryan Gosling. PostTrak exits report he’s 50% of the reason why people went to see the movie (versus 35% for Emily Blunt).

So, what gives? Why is Fall Guy playing like a deflated balloon, even with a great A- CinemaScore and 90% positive on PostTrak?

First, yes, we’re still in an uneven marketplace and won’t be out of it until we have more movies toward the end of the month into June, leading up to Inside Out 2 on Father’s Day weekend. The entire box office weekend is totaling around $73M, off 55% from the same frame a year ago, when Disney/Marvel Studios had Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 leading summer’s charge with $118.4M.

But in Fall Guy, despite how well it plays with audiences (SXSW crowds were belly laughing), there’s nothing that screams “rush to this,” despite Universal showing off the fun and the romance in its campaign. It’s too inside Hollywood, and these types of movies never play to an uber-wide crowd, despite how accessible the studio and filmmakers have tried to make it. “Why do young people want to see this movie?” challenges a film finance source.

Most of all, for an original event film at $130M-$150M+, this movie is too damn expensive.

“They should have spent like Tom Rothman: Make it for $80M. Why is Universal spending the extra money? Instead of spending $220M-$230M between production and marketing costs, they could have pulled this off for $160M-$180M,” added the source.

Some marketing sources are dinging the Fall Guy brand. “Nobody under 60 remembers that show!” However, I don’t think Universal sold the movie on that, and studios have shown before that they can take an antique TV property and turn it into a mega franchise. Hello, Mission: Impossible and Tom Cruise. What Gen Xer had actually watched Mission: Impossible back in the late ’60s? Not me, I wasn’t around then.

Great movies can ascend their brand.

Fall Guy ‘s best play areas are the West and Mountain regions. AMC Lincoln Square is currently the top-grossing venue for the pic with $55K in the till so far. IMAX and PLFs are driving 44% of Fall Guy ‘s weekend.

Largest quad for the David Leitch-directed movie is 25-34 at 25%, with diversity demos seeing 52% Caucasian, 25% Latino and Hispanic, 8% Black, 10% Asian, and 5% other.

Universal, given the love for the film among older women, believes it will leg out. Look, $100M domestic isn’t out of the realm of possibility, especially with these exits. But Fall Guy could drop into PVOD by Memorial Day weekend.

With 8% Rotten Tomatoes critical reviews and 52% audience scores, as well as C- CinemaScore and 59% PostTrak on Sony/Screen Gems’ Tarot , you didn’t need a psychic to see that the Culver City lot wasn’t going to spend one more dime in marketing this movie. Hence the $6.25M opening here on this single-digit budgeted title. The PG-13 movie is 52% female leaning, with 18-34 year old repping 67% of the audience. Those 18-24 were the biggest demo at 40%. Diversity demos were 38% Latino and Hispanic, 30% Caucasian, 16% Black, 9% Asian, and 7% other. Tarot ‘s best regions are the South, South Central, and Midwest, with the Cinemark Rialto the highest grossing location so far with close to $6K (eek).

Other sundries….

Viva’s Dragonkeeper in Spanish and English opened in 760 theaters with meh grosses for what’s looking like $250K for the weekend. The animated indie kids film is set in ancient China and follows a young girl who must find the last remaining dragon egg and fulfill her destiny.

A24’s I Saw the TV Glow from Jane Schoenbrun, about two teenagers who bond over a supernatural TV show, but then it’s mysteriously cancelled, did some good numbers with $54K yesterday from AMC Lincoln Square, Angelika NY, AMC Burbank, and AMC Grove in what’s shaping up to be a $119K 3-day, or near $30K per theater. Muy bien. Critics love it at 88% certified fresh.

1.) Fall Guy (Uni) 4,002 theaters, Fri $10.4M, 3-day $28M/Wk 1

2.) Challengers (AMZ MGM) 3,477 theaters, Fri $2.5M (-60%), 3-day $8.7M (-42%)/Total $30.55M/ Wk 2

3.) Star Wars The Phantom Menace (20th) 2,700 theaters, Fri $2.4M, 3-day $7.2M, Total lifetime $481.7M/Wk 1 re-release

4.) Tarot (Sony) 3,104 theaters,Fri $2.5M 3-day $6.25M/Wk 1

5.) Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (Leg/WB) 2,884 theaters (-428), Fri $1M (-41%) 3-day $4.2M (-42%)/Total $187.7M/ Wk 6

6.) Civil War (A24) 2,689 (-829) theaters, Fri $977K (-49%) 3-day $3.4M (-50%), Total $61.9M/Wk 4

7.) Unsung Hero (LG) 2,832 theaters,Fri $870K (-76%), 3-day $3.1M (-59%), Total $13.2M/Wk 2

8.) Abigail (Uni) 2,638 (-755) theatres, Fri $680K, 3-day $2.3M (-56%)/Total $22.7M/Wk 3

9.) Kung Fu Panda 4 (Uni) 2,380 (-387) theaters, Fri $510K (-39%), 3-day $2.2M (-39%), Total $188.1M/Wk 9

10.) Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (Sony) 2,025 (-602) theaters, Fri $405K (-49%) 3-day $1.63M (-27%), Total $109.7M/Wk 7

Many aren’t shocked: This is where action comedies open, and Fall Guy isn’t that far from the $30M starts of Paramount 2022 adventure rom-com The Lost City and David Leitch’s previous movie, 2022’s Bullet Train . But damn, was Fall Guy, for this concept, expensive at $130M after Australian tax credits. Some have heard the production cost was even higher at $150M.

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Fall Guy already has $8.4M-plus in the bank from a 38-market rollout last weekend including Australia, Turkey, Netherlands and Spain. The movie goes into 40-plus markets this weekend including UK & Ireland, Germany, France and Mexico.

No RT audience score yet.

Amazon MGM Studios’ Challengers is booked at 3,477 theaters and eyeing $2.55M in its second Friday, -59%, for a 3-day around $8.75M , -42%, for a running cume of $30.5M .

Third place goes to 20th Century Studios/Lucasfilm/Disney’s Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace at 2,700 locations for a $2.65M Friday, $8.5M 3-day.

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Sony/Screen Gems’ Tarot booked at 3,104 locations is seeing a $2.4M Friday, 3-day of $6M . Per social media monitor RelishMix, the social universe at 88.6M for this horror pic is running 39% under first installment horror genre norms across TikTok, Facebook, X, YouTube and Instagram combined.

Legendary/Warner Bros.’ Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire in weekend 6 at 2,884 sites is seeing $3.8M , -47%, after a $1M Friday. Running total is $187.4M by Sunday.

FRIDAY AM: Universal teed off summer Thursday night with the Ryan Gosling-Emily Blunt action comedy The Fall Guy, which made $3.15M from showtimes that began at 5 p.m. and Wednesday advance screenings. The movie is only expected to do around $35M for the weekend, maybe $40M . That’s not your typical start to summer, but we’re in this predicament due to the strikes’ delay on feature films.

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Preview-wise that start is right near Paramount’s 2022 adventure rom-com Lost City, which did $3.2M before a $30.4M opening and a $105.3M domestic final.

The most recent release date for The Fall Guy had been March 1, but Universal pushed it to this weekend after Disney and Marvel Studios moved Deadpool & Wolverine to end of July — which some now view as the true start of summer.

Universal believed big time in The Fall Guy, bringing it down to SXSW in Austin for a world premiere where audiences laughed their asses off . This was followed by a screening at the onset of CinemaCon for exhibitors with a stunt-filled Hollywood premiere on Tuesday night. The anticipation is that the Gosling factor of The Fall Guy will keep pulling women to theaters. Also, the movie, despite its insider Hollywood vibe, has a sensibility of yesteryear ’70s/’80s action titles — ones that used to conquer the middle of the country, read Smokey and the Bandit and Every Which Way but Loose.

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Reviews for this PG-13 movie are very respectable at 85% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. The Fall Guy , which cost $130M before P&A, expands to 4,002 theaters with PLFs and Imax.

Also getting re-released this weekend is Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace from Disney. This is to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the prequel timed to May the Fourth aka Star Wars Day. Disney will be showing the pic in 2,600 domestic theaters, including 150 Premium Large Format screens and 130 specialty motion D-Box/4D auditoriums. Advance sales have been solid since launching on March 22, peaking this weekend. The 40th anniversary re-release of  Star Wars: Return of the Jedi  opened to $5.1M 3-day about this time last year. The Phantom Menace  will be paired with an exclusive sneak peek of the upcoming Star Wars series  The Acolyte , which premieres June 4 on Disney+.

Amazon MGM Studios’ Luca Guadagnino-directed Zendaya movie Challengers ends Week 1 with $21.8M after a $1.3M Thursday, -7% from Wednesday at 3,477. It will keep a few Imax screens this weekend.

Lionsgate’s Unsung Hero is second for the week with $10.1M after a $465K Thursday, even with Wednesday at 2,832 locations.

Legendary/Warner Bros’ fifth week of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire clocked $9.1M at 3,312 venues after a $370K Thursday, -8% from Wednesday. The pic’s running cume is $183.5M.

A24’s third week of Alex Garland’s Civil War did $9M at 3,518 venues after a $480K Thursday, -9% from Wednesday.

Universal’s Radio Silence horror movie Abigail, booked at 3,393 locations, ends Week 2 with $7M after a $323K Thursday, -19%, for a running total of $20.5M .

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