I wasn’t going to rent Jungle Cruise on Disney+ (especially considering the $35 price tag), but then enough of my friends said that they found it surprisingly enjoyable that Craig and I decided, eh, why not.
And they were right! It’s surprisingly enjoyable!
A quick aside…
Just a reminder that paid subscribers to Kat Watches Everything get bonus content every week and the smug sense of self-satisfaction that they get to skip over this part of the newsletter every time. For this week’s bonus issue, I’m going to write about a comedy/horror called Spontaneous, about a small town where high school seniors keep spontaneously exploding. It’s more sweet and heart-felt than you’d think! A subscription is just $5 a month or $50 a year, so click below if you want in.
And now, back to Jungle Cruise…
Now, is Jungle Cruise yet another Disney cash grab profiting off one of their rides? Of course. Is the plot basically a mashup of The Mummy and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl? Oh god, yes. Are those movies pretty frickin’ enjoyable so combining them results in a pretty frickin’ enjoyable time? ABSOLUTELY.
This movie follows Lily (Emily Blunt), a slacks-wearing lady of the early 1900s who, along with her brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall), head to the Amazon in search of a magic flower whose petals can cure any illness. Through some madcap shenanigans, they hire boat captain Frank (Dwayne Johnson) to lead them on their voyage, but there are some bad guys after them, specifically Prince Joachim of Prussia (Jesse Plemons), who wants the flower to win the war.
Emily Blunt gets to be as charming as she always is, Dwayne Johnson gets to be as charming as he always is, and there are a lot of big, nail-biting action scenes that are well choreographed and fun to watch. Even the CGI jaguar is delightful, and when I asked Craig if we could get one, he said that we already have one. Which is true.
Yet again, Disney makes a big deal that MacGregor is the “first” gay character in one of their movies, even though I feel like they’ve said that about, like, ten other movies lately. And, as expected, the most he says about his sexuality is that his parents tried to marry him off but his interests lay “elsewhere,” because heaven forfend anyone utter the word “gay” in a Disney movie.
But overall, a fun time! Whether that’s worth the price is up to you, though it is basically the same cost as two people seeing a movie in the theatre, so if you and two other people watch it, you’ve basically made money.
That’s all for me today, gorgeous! Talk to you soon.
Love,
Kat
I definitely enjoyed it but I am getting SO tired of the never ending stream of “first gay x” without any actual representation.
Totally agree! It was a little more dark and violent than I was expecting, but I was happy to see Disney take a big swing like this and succeed instead of mine its IP well directly for sub-par retellings (cough Lion King cough). Frank felt a little flat to me at first, but once he got bantering with Lily he felt more energetic. I’m kind of hoping an animatronic Dwayne Johnson will show up on the actual Jungle Cruise one day, like they did with Depp and Pirates!