JUNGLE CRUISE is the rousing family blockbuster you’ve been waiting for

Admittedly, Jungle Cruise, a blockbuster tentpole based on a problematic Disney theme park attraction, didn’t seem to hold much promise. Following Disney’s slate of uninspiring remakes of animated classics, it felt like the laziest sort of IP-mining. And yet, despite its pedestrian origins, Jungle Cruise is an unexpected delight, the rare summer blockbuster that tries to have something for everyone (and mostly succeeds).

Much of the fun of Jungle Cruise lies with its casting. Set during the first World War, Dwayne Johnson plays a cantankerous riverboat captain named Frank Wolff who spends his days milking tourists on his lackluster boat tours. In debt to an oafish harbourmaster (gleefully played by Paul Giamatti in a rather elaborate makeup job), he takes on a job from British scientist Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) and her doting brother McGregor Houghton (Jack Whitehall) to travel deep into the Amazon in search of the “Tree of Life,” a hidden treasure with miraculous abilities.

Hot on the trio’s heels is Prince Joachim (the always dependable Jesse Plemons), a mustache-twirling mad German aristocrat who is leading his own military expedition to capture the Tree of Life.

The team-up of the hulking and rough-around-the-edges captain and the straight-laced but determined scientist adds a fun element of romantic bickering that nicely off-sets the film’s action elements. Their relationship starts off rather rocky; Frank insists on calling Lily “pants” because she … wears pants (perhaps a rarity for women 100 years ago, but still). Thankfully, their relationship deepens from there and actually becomes fairly poignant as they continue sailing on their journey.

Maybe Dwayne Johnson took those nitrous-fuelled acting jabs from Vin Diesel seriously, because this is one of his best performances in years. He delivers a perfect mix of world-weariness and rascally charm and has great chemistry with Emily Blunt, who excels at the sort of madcap humour we’ve never really seen from her until now.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra (of The Shallows and numerous recent Liam Neeson action flicks) expertly balances the action-adventure, comedy, and romantic elements throughout, resulting in the sort of crowd-pleasing summer blockbuster that used to rule multiplexes in the ‘90s. In fact, Jungle Cruise owes a great debt to the tone of 1999’s The Mummy, alongside romantic action-adventure classics like 1951’s The African Queen and 1984’s Romancing the Stone.

The script (from Glenn Ficarra, John Requa, and Michael Green) gets a little busy and adds a few too many twists to what should have been a relatively straightforward story, especially in the film’s final CGI-heavy act. And while it’s great to see Emily Blunt as a brilliant scientist who can also kick ass, the film does what now seems to be a standard Disney practice of simply including an LGBTQ character but dancing around their sexuality in a way that may rub some viewers the wrong way.

As we coast through the summer months, Jungle Cruise is a perfectly fine way to kill two hours at the theatre (or at home, if you pony up for the Premier Access route on Disney+). It’s a rousing family adventure that actually feels like a theme park ride, with endearing central performances and a silly enough premise to make you forget the outside world for a while. What else do you need from a summer blockbuster?

Jungle Cruise is in theatres and available as a Premier Access purchase on Disney+ as of July 30.