Disney’s Jungle Cruise is a $200 million attempt to turn a theme park ride into a summer blockbuster. It fails. The film is a mess of jokes that don’t land, a romance that never clicks, and a villain who feels less like a threat than a punchline. Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt lead the cast, but neither can save a script that doesn’t know what kind of movie it wants to be.
Trailer, via Disney.
The Setup
Blunt plays Dr. Lily Houghton, a botanist searching for the Tree of Tasia, a mythical plant that could cure her dying father’s illness. She hires Johnson’s Frank Wolff to pilot her across the Amazon on his riverboat, the Jungle Queen. What follows is supposed to be a globe-trotting adventure with heart and humor. Instead, it’s a series of set pieces that feel designed for the ride rather than the screen.
The Problem With the Plot
The central mystery is thin. The Tree of Tasia exists only to give Lily a goal, and the villains, led by Jesse Plemons’ Captain Thorn, exist mainly to chase the heroes through a series of traps. There’s no sense of stakes beyond the father’s illness, and even that gets lost in the chaos of the middle act.
The film also suffers from a tonal shift. It starts as a family-friendly adventure, then dips into dark comedy, then tries to get serious, and finally ends with a finale that feels like it was lifted from a different movie entirely. This constant shifting leaves the audience unsure of what they’re watching.
Johnson and Blunt
Johnson is the reason anyone will see this movie. He brings a physicality to the role that few actors could match, and his chemistry with Blunt is genuinely warm. But even he can’t overcome the material. His jokes fall flat, and his attempts at pathos are undercut by the film’s refusal to commit to any emotional register.
Blunt fares better. She carries the emotional weight of the story, even though the story itself is weak. Her performance is competent, but she’s stuck delivering lines that should be funny and aren’t, and lines meant to be moving that miss the mark.
Plemons is the standout among the villains. He plays Thorn with a gleeful menace that cuts through the film’s general confusion. But even he can’t elevate a plot that doesn’t give him enough to do.
The Comedy
The film leans heavily on jokes about colonialism and imperialism, delivered with a wink and a nudge. Some of them land. Most don’t. The film’s attempt to be clever about history is often just clever for the sake of being clever, and the result is a movie that feels smarter than it is.
There are also jokes about Frank’s past and his relationship with the boat, but they’re scattered and unfocused. The film spends too much time setting up gags it never pays off and paying off gags that didn’t need to be set up.
The Visuals
The production design is the film’s strongest asset. The jungle is lush, the boats are impressive, and the action sequences are competently staged. But visuals can only carry a movie so far, and Jungle Cruise is a movie that needed a lot of carrying.
The film also uses a score that tries to sell the adventure with swelling strings. It mostly succeeds, but it can’t hide the fact that the scenes beneath it are hollow.
The Ending
The finale is a disaster. It’s rushed, confusing, and resolves the plot in a way that feels like an afterthought. The film builds to a climax that should be tense, but it’s undermined by a villain who’s been treated as a joke for most of the runtime.
“We’ve got a jungle full of danger and a tree that might save a life. That’s a pretty good day.”
That’s the kind of line that sums up the problem. It’s meant to be inspirational, but it reads as empty.
The Verdict
Jungle Cruise is a failure. It’s a film that had everything going for it — a beloved ride, a charismatic lead, a talented cast — and still managed to produce something that feels half-finished. The jokes don’t land, the romance doesn’t work, and the villain is a joke. It’s a film that will likely be forgotten quickly, and it deserves to be.
It’s a shame, because the premise was good. A riverboat adventure, a magical tree, a reluctant captain and a determined doctor. That could have been a great movie. Instead, it’s a bloated, unfunny mess.
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