Jungle Cruise: Off the Ride and On to the Big Screen

MIKE AT THE MOVIES

by MIKE ORLOCK

There are seven writing credits for Jungle Cruise (PG-13), the latest live-action adventure from Disney, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Emily Blunt. Four names are listed for story, and three are credited with the screenplay. I won’t name the five writers (two get credit for both story and screenplay) in the interest of brevity, but I find the number surprising.

Not because the script in its various drafts passed through so many hands since it was first pitched in 2004. Screenplays frequently get bent, folded, spindled, mutilated and reassembled on their way to production – if they’re lucky enough to get to production – by many writers, most of whom never receive on-screen credit for their contributions, large or small. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, arguably one of the five greatest American writers to put pen to paper, tinkered with the script for Gone with the Wind, arguably one of the five greatest movies in Hollywood history, but you won’t find him anywhere in the credits. Only Sidney Howard’s name is up there on screen. There’s an old joke in Hollywood: If you’re mad enough to kill someone, kill a writer. They’re as replaceable as batteries.

I don’t know what pull the Jungle Cruise 5 have in the House of Mouse to get all their names in lights, but after watching what’s up on the big screen (yep, I finally went back to the movies!), I think I can guess how the story was developed: Each of the five brought their favorite adventure-movie clichés with them to the table, so we get fifths of The African Queen, The Mummy, Romancing the Stone, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Journey to the Center of the Earth, adding up to one long plot for a movie based on a theme-park ride!

The Rock has the Humphrey Bogart/Brendan Fraser/Michael Douglas/Harrison Ford role of Francisco “Frank” Wolff, a rascally river rat in the Amazon, in debt up to his eyebrows, living la vida loca by night and fleecing tourists by day in a dilapidated rust bucket of a boat that must have cost a fortune in special FX just to keep afloat. Emily Blunt has the Katharine Hepburn/Rachel Weisz/Kathleen Turner/Karen Allen part of Dr. Lily Houghton, a plucky botanist who looks dainty but is burning with ambition and smart as a whip.

This being 1916, Lily’s ignored, of course, by the fusty, male-dominated Royal Society in London when she claims to have discovered the whereabouts of the mythic “Tears of the Moon” tree, whose blossoms can instantly heal any wound and restore life – just the tonic that might win the war with Germany for merry old England. 

In Brazil, she mistakes The Rock for a legit riverboat guide and hires him to take her and her dandyish brother (Jack Whitehall acting the Etonian twit to perfection) up the Amazon to find it so she can stick it to the fuddy-duds who doubted her.

Trying to stop her is a dastardly German nobleman (Jesse Plemons, having a ball playing with his sinister Teutonic accent), who claims kinship with the kaiser himself. He wants the magical tree for Germany and will do anything – even pilot a submarine up the Amazon or conjure an army of cursed Spanish conquistadors – to get it.

Most of the plot machinations that our five scribes cooked up careen from silly to ridiculous, especially when young director Jaume Collet-Serra (the Liam Neeson thriller The Commuter is on his résumé) takes things too seriously. 

His touch is better with his two stars, who seem to genuinely enjoy playing against each other. Frank nicknames Lily “Pants” because she prefers trousers to skirts; she calls him “Skippy” rather than Captain because he’s such a lovable doofus, even when she finally realizes his big secret – which isn’t all that surprising if you’ve seen a few of these kinds of movies before.

What would be surprising is if this is the only ride these two take. Disney has milked the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction for five films to date, so the odds are good that it’ll find some writers to concoct another jungle or two for The Rock and Emily to cruise through before this novelty act runs aground.

Jungle Cruise is currently in theaters and streaming on Disney+ for a premium fee. I recommend seeing it on the big screen if you have an interest in turning off your brain for a couple hours, but leave the younger kids at home. At 127 minutes, it’s a bit too long for short attention spans.

In another lifetime, Mike Orlock wrote film reviews for The Reporter/Progress newspapers in the western suburbs of Chicago. He has also taught high school English, coached basketball and authored three books of poetry. He currently serves as Door County’s poet laureate.