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Blunt keeps putting out more than enough flinty looks of interest to sell a romance, but her leading man rarely reflects it back at her. Fortunately, the film's tight construction and prolific action scenes carry it, and Blunt and Johnson do the irresistible force/immovable object dynamic well enough, swapping energies as the story demands. At this point it’s worth mentioning that, like Wonder Woman before it, Jungle Cruise is set during World War I, but treats it basically as if it has the same dynamics as World War II. It’s as if Disney knew that it wanted to crib from an adventure movie like Indiana Jones, but also told the seven credited writers of Jungle Cruise that it would be unwise to directly involve Nazis in a four-quadrant family picture. Plemons has the straw-blond hair and over-the-top affect of an actor who has decided to play the stereotypical German villain role anyway (his wave as he emerges from the river is not quite a salute, but also not-not a salute), so let’s just say the semiotics of the film are confused. Of all the longtime favorite rides of the Disneyland theme parks, the Jungle Cruise, introduced in 1955, is among the most enduringly captivating.
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And if you start to try and cheat those physics, which is what happens a lot of the time, then the simulation stuff all goes right out the window, and it breaks everything. The group can tell by the dead bodies around them that giving an unsatisfactory answer will be deadly. There’s also an obvious racial undertone to his question—a variation of the loaded “Where are you really from? To prove he’s not messing around, he doesn’t hesitate to shoot Bohai, killing him and leaving everyone shaken.
Paul Giamatti’s ‘Jungle Cruise’ Character Is Absolutely Delightful
The word “gay” isn’t used, but McGregor indicates that his lack of interest in women — more precisely, that his “interests happily lie elsewhere” — led to his ostracization by his family, with only Lily accepting him. Frank, too, is affirming, raising a glass “to elsewhere.” And that’s the end of that, at least until a string of winking double entendres in a scene involving impalement. I’m honestly curious whether this approach to “representation” pleases anyone, or whether Disney’s insistent but timid “progressivism” falls between two stools and leaves no one happy. By the time Lily and fussbudget toff MacGregor reach the Brazilian port that will be their embarkation point, I was already growing restless. Though kids are the target demographic, anyone older is likely to spend a lot of time thinking about the superior films being ransacked here for ideas, among them Raiders of the Lost Ark, Romancing the Stone and The African Queen.
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But Lily is soon scammed into engaging Frank’s services, and they set off upriver on what could generously be called a rollicking, fantastical riff on Heart of Darkness. Some early humor comes from MacGregor packing like Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with trunk after trunk of toiletries and apparel for every occasion, most of which Frank tosses overboard. Meanwhile, Lily’s radical-for-the-era choice of pants is repeatedly emphasized to establish her feminist bona fides. Everything about Jungle Cruise points not to creative inspiration in spinning a feature property out of the ride, but to corporate bean counters enthusing, “Hey, it worked for Pirates of the Caribbean! ” Following that template to a fault, the project has been in the works for more than 15 years, originally slated to shoot in 2005 for a 2006 release date.
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In the pantheon of Disney movies based on Disney theme park rides, "Jungle Cruise" is pretty good—leagues better than dreck like "Haunted Mansion," though not quite as satisfying as the original "Pirates of the Caribbean." Meanwhile, Plemons has no intentions of letting Joel go; that Joel is from Florida leaves a bad taste in his mouth. He seems to be relishing toying with Joel’s life, absorbing their cries and pleadings with a villainous cruelty. Suddenly, Sammy comes careening through in his car, knocking Plemons and his accomplice down and saving his friends lives, bringing this horrific scene to an end. Before he even speaks, Plemons is able to present a full life through his physicality.
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Jesse Plemons to menace Dwayne Johnson in Disney’s Jungle Cruise - JoBlo.com
Jesse Plemons to menace Dwayne Johnson in Disney’s Jungle Cruise.
Posted: Thu, 19 Apr 2018 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Sometimes it’s a theoretically original film like this, another attempt to turn a Disneyland ride into a big-screen franchise. As you watch Jaume Collet-Serra’s adventure, you’re haunted by the unpleasant feeling that this is a supposedly fun thing that’s already been done before. It’s only thanks to Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt that the result holds the attention, and it’s a credit to them that it’s entertaining at all. If only the core charms that have given the Disneyland ride such longevity weren’t so smothered by overstuffed plot. Compared to other attempts to turn theme park attractions into fresh revenue streams, it’s not as lifeless as The Haunted Mansion or Tomorrowland. In Frank's cabin, Lily finds his research on the Tears of the Moon, but Frank insists he stopped searching long ago.
In the worst instances of this, a bad movie will even bring a good actor down to its level, like Amy Adams in Hillbilly Elegy. The most pleasant surprise is that director Jaume Collet-Serra ("The Shallows") and a credited team of five, count 'em, writers have largely jettisoned the ride's mid-century American colonial snarkiness and casual racism (a tradition only recently eliminated). Although his role in the movie is rather small, Jesse Plemons immerses himself into the part of Kevin Weeks, the longtime friend and mob lieutenant to Whitey Bulger. As always, Plemons brings a brooding intensity to the role, equipped with a steel stare and commanding presence. One scene in particular, although hard to watch, showcases Plemons as one of Hollywood’s most intense actors. In the scene, Weeks pummels a man half to death, fleeing the scene with zero remorse.
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I’m speaking, of course, of Paul Giamatti and his role in Jungle Cruise as a mustache-twirling, gold-tooth-having, aggressively Italian harbormaster. Giamatti’s role in Jungle Cruise is, technically speaking, a fairly inconsequential character. He really only has a few scenes as Nilo Nemolato, a greedy man who charges Dwayne Johnson’s character, a riverboat captain named Frank, to park his boat in his harbor. But the impression that Giamatti makes in those few minutes of screentime was so significant, I found myself pondering the performance for the rest of the film’s 127-minute runtime.
But Jungle Cruise is still a criminal waste of his talents, and yet another case of the special kind of a disappointment that comes from watching a favorite actor do a terrible movie. As he’s wont to do, the Oscar nominee—and Hollywood’s premier creep–steals the entire movie with a single bone-chilling scene. A24 have become known for their delivery of some of the most tense and jarring movies of the last decade. Set in a dystopian America where the country has descended into a civil war at the hands of The President (Nick Offerman), the movie follows a team of journalists who make a perilous journey to Washington DC with hopes of interviewing and photographing The President. Nobody appreciates this except Lily’s brother McGregor, played by Whitehall as a buffoonish dandy of a sort that might be described as “queer-coded,” if not for the brief scene in which he comes out to Frank.
(The German’s supernatural communication powers are never quite explained.) The pointed detail that the otherwise fearless Lily can’t swim makes it no surprise when she is forced to lead a daring underwater maneuver, which at the same time ups the romantic ante with Frank. As a decoy, her brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall) presents her theories about the unparalleled healing powers of the mysterious tree, which could revolutionize modern medicine and greatly aid the war effort. Blunt and the rest of the cast joined in 2018 in a revamped version, with filming taking place in Hawaii and Georgia, from May, through September that year. To Plemons' credit, he plays the role with what I'd describe as "amusing gusto," putting on an absolutely over-the-top German accent and shouting things like "Hallöchen!" when he pops out of his sub.
The CGI is dicey, particularly on the larger jungle animals—was the production rushed, or were the artists just overworked? —and there are moments when everything seems so rubbery/plasticky that you seem to be watching the first film that was actually shot on location at Disney World. Paul Giamatti plays a gold-toothed, sunburned, cartoonishly “Italian” harbor master who delights at keeping Frank in debt. Edgar Ramirez is creepy and scary as a conquistador whose curse from centuries ago has trapped him in the jungle.
Since then, the script has passed through many hands before being taken up by Michael Green (who co-wrote the terrific Wolverine farewell, Logan, and penned Kenneth Branagh’s Agatha Christie remakes) with Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. Not even Emily Blunt, doing her best Katharine Hepburn impression, can keep this leaky boat ride afloat. Disney's upcoming movie finds Blunt's Lily Houghton, a researcher aiming to find Lagrimas de Cristal, hiring Johnson's character, Frank, a river guide tasked with guiding her to it. And what makes it even better is that Giamatti himself designed the character, which perhaps explains why it’s so over-the-top fantastic. The big trick with that was the art direct-ability of the boat, the speed of which you went through the rapids and what kind of splashes it made.
From the moment he enters his first frame, Plemons exudes a sinister aura that thrusts the audience into a state of dread and anxiety. The fact that he delivers such a haunting portrayal with such little screen-time truly showcases his might as an actor, cementing him as one of the best movie villains of recent years. The novelty here, already widely commented on while the film was in production, is Disney’s first openly gay character, MacGregor. Leaving aside the outcry over the casting of an actor who identifies as heterosexual, Brit comedian Whitehall is a likable presence, even if his posh blathering makes him more of a familiar type than a distinctive character. MacGregor’s account to Frank of his bumpy family history, being disinherited after refusing various suitable marriage opportunities because his interest lay “elsewhere,” is played unambiguously. But his gradual transformation from stuffed shirt into plucky adventurer is strictly by-the-numbers.
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