I don’t make it a habit to reference my personal background when writing a movie review, but in the case of Disney’s latest ride-based release, “Jungle Cruise,” I can’t resist.
You see, my husband is a Jungle Cruise skipper. Or he was. In college. And if you know him, you know the qualities that landed him the gig. Handsome yet approachable; corny yet likeable — he possesses the rare ability to deliver a dad joke with such sparkle, you both groan at the lameness and look forward to the next failed zinger.
“Jungle Cruise” the movie (rated PG-13) tries to build its main character — Skipper Frank (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) — around the ride’s bad-joke schtick.
In a way, this decision makes sense. The Jungle Cruise at both Disney Land and Disney World would be nothing special without those wisecracks. An animatronic hippo that rises slowly from the water? How entertaining is that compared to Space Mountain? Some plaster monkeys staged in mildly amusing frozen scenarios? How is that supposed to compete with the whirling phantasms of the Haunted Mansion?
The dorky skipper and his awful puns. That’s how.
The trick, my husband used to tell me, is that you have to deliver those awful punchlines — please notice that there’s a dock on the left, and a dock on the right. But don’t let it confuse you. It’s a paradox! — with conviction, as if you’re really expecting a big laugh. You have to pause and relish the silence before hitting them with the hack. You have to sell it.
Despite his WWE background, The Rock isn’t equipped for that. So much so, the first couple of times he uttered one of the famous groaners, he did so in such a rushed, understated manner, I didn’t recognize they were supposed to be jokes, even though I’ve heard similar lines regularly over nearly two decades of marriage.
At the risk of going zen on the topic of bad joke telling, The Rock doesn’t do what Johnny Depp did with the drunkenness of Captain Jack Sparrow, which is drill down on what turns someone into a wannabe Henny Youngman. And without that sharp characterization from which all the fun must flow, you just end up with a lot of cool scenery devoid of interest.
Beyond the Skipper, “Jungle Cruise” has nothing original to offer. We get essentially the same storyline as “Pirate’s of the Caribbean” with slightly different window dressing.
Plucky lady biologist Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) and her effeminate brother arrive in the Amazon with an antique map looking for a mythical tree of life. Rather than Her Majesty’s uptight Royal Navy, this time the feminist hero has an overly-manicured German aristocrat (Jesse Plemons) on her tail. When she isn’t dodging him, she’s evading a horde of cursed zombie pirates, er, that is, cursed zombie conquistadors.
The rest of the movie is similarly cliché. Instead of bemoaning corsets to signal her female empowerment as Keira Knightly did in “Pirates,” Blunt berates skirts. Only men’s pants can contain her brand of girl power. Though we’re in a different part of the world, the murky, swashbuckling visuals feel basically the same, and nothing surprises. Beat by beat, we know exactly what we’re going to see next because we’ve seen it all before.
Kids might not mind a jungle retread of “The Mummy” with leads devoid of chemistry, but parents aren’t likely to love the cheap double entrendres like the gay brother’s line about “biting on my stick” or Frank telling Lily with a leer “the first time is always special” as she pulls a knife from his body.
A better bet is to stay home and rent the films whose actors do really sell the jokes.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Source: Dailywire
