(For some unknown reason the author of this review was not given a holiday at Disney World)
Penned by Werner Herzog during the "vorst three hours of my life" waiting in line for a ride on Disney's now-infamous "Dschungelkreuzfahrt," Jungle Cruise had a similarly troubled production despite being filmed almost entirely on a green screen in a studio thousands of miles from the Amazon rainforest. In interviews with the cast and crew it was leaked that A. Studio Director, most famous for keeping his job for at least three-forths of a live action remake, threatened both The Rock and Emily Blunt with a gun in order to draw some kind of performance out of the mega-stars. Unfortunately for all involved this failed to prompt anything from the pair.
Set during a time of international tension, the film focuses on a brave academic who risks life and limb to fight people with funny accents. Any sense of disbelief is quickly suspended when our hero survives a nuclear explosion in a lead-lined refrigerator... Oops. To compare the films would be unkind to LaBeouf. A better point of comparison would be Will Ferrell's Land of the Lost, a similar CGI-soaked stinker and Jungle Cruise's other spiritual grandfather. The funniest part of this film is Aguirre committing a little genocide to Metallica doing a cover of Seal's Kiss from a Rose.
Disney breaks new ground in this one by giving fans what they've always wanted, a gay character who supports the heterosexual relationship of the main pair. Because there can be no light without darkness, the villain of the piece is also flamboyantly gay but in an evil German way.
Back in 2001 Disney released Atlantis: The Lost Empire, which despite its flaws was a lovingly crafted film made by a talented team who actually cared about what they were doing. The biggest flaw of the feature was that they simply came up with too much for a 90 minute movie. Jungle Cruise is similarly incomplete, but it's obvious that they left nothing on the cutting floor. What you see is all that they have to give.
The opinions placed before your eyes belong entirely to the reviewer and will remain his until he's given an all expenses paid trip to Florida.