Review: ‘Carry-On,’ starring Taron Egerton, Sofia Carson, Danielle Deadwyler and Jason Bateman

December 25, 2024

by Carla Hay

Tonatiuh and Taron Egerton in “Carry-On” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“Carry-On”

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

Culture Representation: Taking place in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, the action film “Carry-On” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some black people, Latin people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent is forced to participate in a terrorist plot, where he has been told that he has to let a certain carry-on suitcase past the X-ray machine that he is monitoring and onto a certain plane, or else his pregnant girlfriend will be murdered.

Culture Audience: “Carry-On” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and action movies that are predictable but enjoyable.

Jason Bateman in “Carry-On” (Photo courtesy of Netflix)

“Carry-On” is a preposterous but entertaining thrill ride about an airport security agent caught up in a deadly terrorist plot involving a smuggled carry-on suitcase. The movie doesn’t take itself seriously and has well-cast heroes and villains. This is the type of movie made for escapism for viewers—not to make any meaningful statements or to provoke deep thoughts.

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and written by T.J. Fixman, “Carry-On” takes place in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve. The movie was actually filmed in New Orleans, mainly at the decommissioned terminal at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. “Carry-On” begins by showing two Russian thugs named Olek (played by Jeff Pope) and Yuri (played by Raymond Rehage) at a large greenhouse somewhere in Los Angeles. The movie’s chief villain (played by Jason Bateman)—an assassin whose name is never revealed—enters the greenhouse, shoots Olek and Yuri, and the sets the greenhouse on fire.

The next scene in “Carry-On” shows live-in couple—30-year-old Ethan Kopek (played by Taron Egerton) and 27-year-old Nora Parisi (played by Sofia Carson)—waking up to get ready to go to work. Ethan and Nora, who have been dating each other for three years, both work at Los Angeles International Airport, also known as LAX. Ethan is a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent. Nora is an operations manager at North Wind Airlines, a company that was fabricated for this movie.

Nora is pregnant with her and Ethan’s first child, but the movie never says how far along she is in her pregnancy. Based on her physical appearance and conversations about the pregnancy, Nora is probably two or three months pregnant. Ethan and Nora are a happy couple looking forward to the birth of the child, but Ethan has some lingering insecurities that are affecting the relationship.

It’s eventually revealed in conversations that Ethan, who is originally from New Jersey, isn’t satisfied with the way his career is going. He moved to Los Angeles to be with Nora after she was hired by North Wind, which requires her to live in the Los Angeles area. Ethan only became a TSA agent at LAX so he and Nora could work in the same building.

What Ethan really wants to do with his life is be a police officer. He applied to enroll at a police academy once and was rejected. He was so hurt by this rejection that he hasn’t bothered to apply again, even though Nora keeps encouraging Ethan to re-apply. Nora candidly tells Ethan that when he applied to a police academy, it was the last time she saw him truly excited about his life.

A little later in the movie, it’s revealed there are other reasons for Ethan’s insecurity and disillusionment about becoming a police officer: His father (who’s never seen in the movie) also wanted to be a police officer and applied to a police academy several times but was always rejected. Ethan’s father is now an Uber driver. You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to know that Ethan is afraid he’s going to end up just like his father—doing a job he doesn’t really like because he couldn’t get his dream job.

It’s under these circumstances that Ethan arrives for work late (which apparently isn’t the first time), where he has a reputation for being likable but not particularly reliable. It’s why Ethan has been assigned the job of a metal-detector agent instead of the more challenging job of being an X-ray agent responsible for operating the equipment that scans carry-on items. It’s also why Ethan hasn’t been promoted in the three years that he’s had this job.

Ethan’s closest friend at his job is a mild-mannered co-worker named Jason Noble (played by Sinqua Walls), a married father who is a TSA agent who operates X-ray machines. Jason advises Ethan to try to get a promotion to have this type of job because Ethan is going to need more money to raise a child. Their boss Phil Sarkowski (played by Dean Norris) bluntly tells Ethan that he hasn’t given Ethan a promotion because Ethan acts like he doesn’t want to be at this TSA job. Ethan promises that he will be more responsible and wants to prove that he’s worthy of getting a promotion.

Jason tells a skeptical Phil that Jason will switch job responsibilities with Ethan on that day so Ethan can get a chance to show that he has the ability to do the X-ray job. Phil reluctantly agrees. It’s the first of many things that don’t ring true in “Carry-On” because there’s nothing to show that Ethan was trained for this X-ray job before being suddenly thrust into it.

Of course, this unlikely but still possible twist of fate is why Ethan is in the proverbial “hot seat” that makes him the distressed hero of the story. He becomes a target when terrorists force him to allow a certain passenger and the passenger’s carry-on suitcase through the X-ray machine and onto the plane. The terrorists refuse to say what’s in the suitcase, but Ethan finds out that the plan is to kill all of the approximately 250 people on the plane after the plane is in flight. (This review won’t reveal what’s in the suitcase, except to say it’s not an obvious weapon, such as a bomb.)

It isn’t long before Ethan is contacted by the person who forces Ethan to participate in this deadly terrorist plot. This person (the same killer from the movie’s opening scene) becomes Ethan’s chief adversary. Even though this assassin’s name is never revealed in “Carry-On,” in the movie’s end credits, he is listed only as Traveler. This elusive killer is able to avoid detection because he looks like a regular middle-aged guy who’s able to blend in easily.

Traveler has an unnamed accomplice, identified as Watcher (played by Theo Rossi), who is stationed in a repair van in an airport parking lot. Somehow, this van has surveillance equipment that can track several areas inside the airport. One of the repeated scenarios is that Watcher and Traveler are constantly tracking Ethan in the airport through surveillance, which makes it harder for Ethan to get help when he finds himself embroiled in this terrorist plot. It’s a very far-fetched scenario. Ethan is able to find a few “blind spots” in the airport that the terrorists can’t see.

Watcher and Traveler are able to quickly find out a lot of personal information about the TSA agents. These two criminals had originally planned to force Jason into their terrorist plan by holding Jason’s wife and daughter hostage. But when Watcher and Traveler see that Ethan is working at the X-ray station where Jason normally works, they decided to target Ethan under the threat of killing pregnant Nora.

Traveler tells Watcher about this sudden change of plans: “Let’s pivot. Fill in some blanks. No matter what, this gets done today.” Traveler is able to get a cell phone placed on the conveyer belt that Ethan is operating. Just as Ethan sees that no airline passenger has claimed this phone, he sees text messages appear on the phone telling Ethan to wear an ear bud that is placed nearby.

It’s the first time that Ethan hears from Traveler, who communicates with Ethan through this ear bud. Traveler tells Ethan about the plan and describes in detail what the passenger and briefcase look like. Ethan later finds out that the passenger carrying the briefcase is named Mateo Flores (played by Tonatiuh), who is wearing a red baseball cap. At first Ethan thinks it’s all an elaborate prank. But when Traveler tells Ethan how many personal details he knows about Ethan’s life, Ethan is convinced this is no prank.

Traveler not only threatens Ethan by saying Nora will be killed if Ethan doesn’t follow Traveler’s orders but Traveler also threatens to kill other people inside the airport if Ethan tries to get help or report this terrorist plot. Traveler says that if Ethan does something such as removing the ear bud to cut off contact with Traveler, that could get someone killed too. At one point, Traveler asks Ethan if he would rather have 250 die on an airplane or thousands of people die in an airport.

When Ethan asks Traveler if he’s a terrorist, Travel replies: “I consider myself a freelance facilitator.” It’s implied throughout the movie that Traveler and Watcher are “middle men” hired by a larger entity, which is never named in the movie. Traveler is often cold and detached, but he also has a tendency to rant and ramble about things that irritate him. During some of his rants, he reveals his contempt for millennials and Gen Z people, whom he thinks are wimpy and over-reliant on technology. Traveler also thinks he’s the smartest person in the room who’s skilled at psychoanalysis as a way to predict and manipulate people’s actions.

“Carry-On” has a few supporting characters who are pivotal to the story. Los Angeles police detective Elena Cole (played by Danielle Deadwyler) is the first law enforcement officer to suspect that there might be a terrorist plan put into motion at LAX. She’s later joined by Agent Alcott (played by Logan Marshall-Green) from the FBI. Ethan also has a TSA co-worker named Eddie (played by Gil Perez-Abraham), an aspiring rapper who shamelessly peddles his music to his co-workers and other people at the airport. Eddie is the movie’s “comic relief” character.

“Carry-On” has some other intentionally comedic moments, including a montage of angry and difficult passengers who feel that they’re being inconvenienced in some way by the TSA screening process. Traveler also has some wry comments that are meant to show that he’s deeply cynical about how society works and he’s just a hired gun who doesn’t care about taking sides in politics when it comes to the work he’s hired to do. Detective Cole also has some one-liner jokes that are a bit corny but are intended to bring some laughs.

“Carry-On” is an effective thriller not just because of the adrenaline-packed actions scenes because of the performances from the movie’s talented cast members. A movie like this is often appealing because of the chief hero and the chief villain. Egerton is able to be a vulnerable “everyman” who’s easy to root for when it’s time for Ethan to show he’s a lot braver and smarter than most people think he might be. Bateman is also quite convincing as a mysterious but menacing terrorist. “Carry-On” doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a crowd-pleasing movie that has a few twists to its formulaic plot but ends up right where most viewers expect.

Netflix premiered “Carry-On” on December 13, 2024.

Review: ‘Black Adam,’ starring Dwayne Johnson, Pierce Brosnan, Aldis Hodge, Noah Centineo, Sarah Shahi, Marwan Kenzari, Quintessa Swindell, Mohammed Amer and Bodhi Sabongui

October 19, 2022

by Carla Hay

Dwayne Johnson in “Black Adam” (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

“Black Adam”

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional nation of Kahndaq and briefly in Louisiana, the superhero action film “Black Adam” features a racially diverse cast of characters (white, Asian and African American) portraying superheroes and regular human beings.

Culture Clash: Reluctant superhero Teth Adam, later known as Black Adam, finds it difficult to change his vengeful and troublemaking ways, and he does battle against the Justice Society and a group of land pillagers called Intergang. 

Culture Audience: “Black Adam” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Dwayne Johnson and movies based on DC Comics, but the movie is a disappointing and unimaginative cinematic origin story for Black Adam.

Sarah Shahi and Pierce Brosnan in “Black Adam” (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

“Black Adam” is nothing more than a mishmash of big-budget superhero clichés with empty dialogue, atrocious editing, a forgettable villain and a lackluster story. You know it’s bad when the mid-credits scene is what people will talk about the most. “Black Adam” (which is based on DC Comics characters and stories) is the type of misguided mess that tries to do too much and ends up not making much of impact at all. It’s one of the weakest movies in the DC Extended Universe.

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, “Black Adam” could have been a thoroughly entertaining, epic superhero movie, based on the fact that charismatic Dwayne Johnson has the title role, and the movie has several talented cast members. (Johnson is also one of the movie’s producers.) But the “Black Adam” screenplay (written by Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani) is a complete dud, with mindless conversations and stale jokes that look too forced.

It’s fair to say that people don’t watch superhero movies for super-intelligent dialogue, but even the action sequences in “Black Adam” are substandard. The visual effects are hit-and-miss and aren’t particularly impressive. And the choppy editing looks like something you might see in a beginner, low-budget film, not a movie that with experienced filmmakers and a bloated nine-figure production budget.

“Black Adam” begins in the year 2600 B.C. in the fictional kingdom of Kahndaq, which is supposed to be somewhere in the Middle East. The most valuable resource in Kahndaq is Eternium, which gives special magical powers to anyone in possession of Eternium. Needless to say, wars and crimes have been committed in the competition to get Eternium.

A mystical warrior named Teth Adam (played by Johnson), who has superpowers in strength and speed, is someone who experienced a tragedy as a result of this greed for Eternium. As a result, he went on vengeful crime sprees but was eventually imprisoned in the Rock of Eternity (which is a resource hub for magic), where he was entombed for 5,000 years. The legend of Teth Adam was passed on for generations.

In the present day, Kahndaq is now an economically struggling country that has been invaded by white Europeans looking to mine the land for Eternium. A villainous group called Intergang wreaks the most havoc in this quest for Eternium. Meanwhile, a group of rebel freedom fighters aiming to defeat Intergang will be hunted by members of Intergang.

What does this have to do with Black Adam? One of the leaders of the freedom fighters is named Adrianna Tomaz (played by Sarah Shahi), who ends up being captured with her brother Karim (played by Mo Amer), who is also a freedom fighter, while they are trying to get a magical crown. Their friend and colleague Ishmael (played by Marwan Kenzari) is also involved in tryng to get this crown.

While being held captive in a cave that ends up being where the Rock of Eternity is, Adrianna yells, “Shazam!” It’s the magical word that awakens Teth Adam, who breaks out of captivity from the tomb. Adrianna and Karim escape, but for a good deal of the movie, they are being chased by Intergang thugs. Will formerly imprisoned Adam help them?

Adrianna is a widowed mother of an adolsecent son named Amon Tomaz (played by Bodhi Sabongui), who’s about 13 or 14 years old. Without going into too many details, it’s enough to say that Teth Adam eventually meets Amon, Adrianna and Karim. Amon immediately is in awe of Adam, but Adam is less impressed with this family and doesn’t really want to get involved with the family’s Intergang problems, until certain circumstances lead Adam to be on the family’s side.

That entire storyline would be enough for one movie, but “Black Adam” crams in another storyline where Adam is at odds with a group of superheroes called Justice Society, which has reunited when it becomes known that Teth Adam is on the loose and causing damage again. Viola Davis has a cameo near the beginning of “Black Adam” to reprise her “Suicide Squad” character Amanda Waller, who makes a command that sets the Justice Society back in motion. There’s nothing special about any of the cast members’ acting, a lot of which looks “phoned in,” with no uniquely memorable flair.

The members of the Justice Society in the “Black Adam” movie are:

  • Carter Hall/Hawkman (played by by Aldis Hodge), a loyal and earnest warrior who has lived for thousands of years and has the flying skills of a hawk.
  • Kent Nelson/Doctor Fate (played by Pierce Brosnan), a kind-hearted and grandfatherly archeologist who has the powers of a sorcerer.
  • Al Rothstein/Atom Smasher (played by Noah Centineo), a clumsy and goofy 20-year-old who can grow to the size of a skyscraper.
  • Maxine Hunkel/Cyclone (played by Quintessa Swindell), a playful and courageous 19-year-old who has the power to use her mind to create cyclone-like gusts of wind.

Unfortunately, all of these Justice Society characters are written to have very generic personalities and extremely bland chemistry with each other. Maxine Hunkel/Cyclone in particular is very under-used and is more like a placeholder than an impactful, developed character. And some of the lines of dialogue they have to say are downright cringeworthy. More than once, Hawkman says to Doctor Fate: “A bad plan is better than no plan at all.” That sounds like the same attitude that the “Black Adam” filmmakers had in making this shoddy superhero movie.

Expect to see a lot of formulaic chase scenes, shootouts, explosions and all the usual stereotypes of superhero action flicks. “Black Adam” has some half-hearted preachiness about white colonialism in countries where most of the residents aren’t white, but this attempt to bring a “social consciousness” to “Black Adam” looks as phony as some of the movie’s often-unconvincing visual effects. Everything in the story is jumbled up and scatterbrained, as if the filmmakers couldn’t decide how to juggle the storylines of Adam being at odds with the Justice Society and Intergang. (The 2021 action flick “Jungle Cruise,” also directed by Collet-Serra and starring Johnson, had the same overstuffed story problem.)

Meanwhile, Teth Adam/Black Adam scowls and smashes his way throughout the movie like a bulldozer on autopilot. The teenage character of Amon is hyper and talkative to the point of annoyance. Amon’s uncle Karim is supposed to be the comic relief of the movie, but just ends up looking mostly like a buffoon. Adrianna is the voice of reason for the group of freedom fighters, but nothing stands out about this character’s personality. And when one of the movie’s heroes has an underage child, you know what that means when the villains want revenge.

And about those villains. One of the biggest failings of “Black Adam” is that none of these villains is particularly memorable. The “chief villain” battle at the end looks more like a video game than a cinematic experience. The best superhero movies have villains who make the type of scene-stealing impact that audiences talk about for years. “Black Adam” comes up very short on every level when it comes to unforgettable villainous characters.

What happens in the mid-credits scene of “Black Adam” has already been widely reported, but it won’t be detailed in this review. It’s enough to say that it involves another DC Comics superhero and how that superhero might interact with Black Adam. It’s never a good sign when a movie’s main character and story are so underwhelming, it’s upstaged by the sudden appearance of another character in a mid-credits scene that foreshadows the anticipated plot of an obvious sequel.

Warner Bros. Pictures will release “Black Adam” in U.S. cinemas on October 21, 2022.

Review: ‘Jungle Cruise,’ starring Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Edgar Ramírez, Jack Whitehall, Jesse Plemons and Paul Giamatti

July 27, 2021

by Carla Hay

Dwyane Johnson and Emily Blunt in “Jungle Cruise” (Photo by Frank Masi/Disney Enterprises, Inc.)

“Jungle Cruise”

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

Culture Representation: Taking place mostly in 1912, in Brazil and England, the action-adventure film “Jungle Cruise” features a racially diverse cast of characters (white, African American Asian and Latino) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A sassy researcher and her fussy botanist brother, who are both from England, enlist the help of a wisecracking American skipper of a ramshackle cruise boat to go to a Brazilian jungle to find a magical tree which has a petal with the power to save lives.

Culture Audience: “Jungle Cruise” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of any Disney adventure films, but might not hold much interest to people who’ve seen better family-friendly adventure films that take place mostly in a jungle.

Jack Whitehall, Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson in “Jungle Cruise” (Photo by Frank Masi/Disney Enterprises, Inc.)

Overstuffed with generic villains and too rambling for its own good, “Jungle Cruise” offers nothing new or exciting to people who’ve seen higher-quality and more unique adventure films with a jungle at the center of the action. It’s a bland misfire that borrows heavily from 1981’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and 1951’s “The African Queen.” Viewers already know how a movie like “Jungle Cruise” is going to end, so “Jungle Cruise” needed to have other elements to make it stand out from similar movies that have a wisecracking male hero and his adventurous love interest who wants to be treated as his equal. Unfortunately, “Jungle Cruise” is stuck in a rut of mediocrity that will make this movie forgettable soon after watching it.

At a total running time of 127 minutes, “Jungle Cruise” over-indulges in characters and scenes that weren’t needed for the movie. Children under the age of 8 and people with very short attention spans might get bored or irritated by the unnecessary convolutions to the plot, which just weigh the story down more than stagnant muck in a jungle swamp. Don’t be surprised if some parts of the movie will make you want to go to sleep.

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, “Jungle Cruise” was written by Glenn Ficarra, John Requa and Michael Green. The extraneous plot contrivances seem entirely designed to stretch out the movie’s running time, as if the writers were afraid that that sticking to a simple concept wouldn’t work. In addition, too many parts of the movie seem forced and very fake, such as the romance between the male and female protagonists.

There are also some heavy-handed references to sexism and feminism that are repeated to irksome levels, as if the “Jungle Cruise” filmmakers think viewers are too dimwitted to notice the first three times these same references are in the movie. A running commentary in “Jungle Cruise” is that some of the men can’t believe that the female protagonist is wearing pants. The male protagonist even starts calling her “Pants” as a nickname. It’s a tired joke that wears very thin quickly. And the “feminism” messages in “Jungle Cruise” come across as extremely phony when this movie’s cast members who get top billing are several men but only one woman.

“Jungle Cruise” takes place in 1912, but there are flashbacks throughout the story to previous centuries. The movie opens with a voiceover explanation about the ancient legend that serves as the catalyst for this story. (The musical score during this intro uses an instrumental version of Metallica’s 1991 ballad “Nothing Else Matters,” which is kind of distracting for viewers who know this song.)

In the Legend of the Tears of the Moon, a magical tree called Tears of the Moon exists in the Amazon jungle. This tree has a petal that can cure any illness and break any curse. Over centuries, many explorers sought to find this petal. One of these explorers was a Spanish conquistador from the 1500s named Don Lope de Aguirre (played by Edgar Ramírez), also known as Aguirre, who got injured during his exploration and was found by the guardians of the tree.

After these guardians nursed Aguirre back to health, he demanded that the guardians give him a sacred arrowhead, which is believed to be the key to finding the Tears of the Moon. Aguirre and his conquistadors attacked the guardians, and the jungle fought back. (And yes, there are predictable scenes of trees coming to life and using their branches to tie up people.) As a result, Aguirre was cursed and held captive by the jungle trees for eternity.

In London in 1912, botanist MacGregor Houghton (played by Jack Whitehall) is making a presentation pitch to an all-male group of high-society members in a museum lecture hall. He’s reading a speech from index cards that were written by his much-smarter sister Dr. Lily Houghton (played by Emily Blunt), a researcher who is watching nervously from the balcony. MacGregor wants to convince this group of elites that the Legend of the Tears of the Moon is real, so that they can invest in a trip that MacGregor and Lily want to take to the Amazon jungle to find this magical tree.

MacGregor is fairly unskilled at public speaking (or he didn’t take the time to rehearse his speech), because on the index cards, where Lily wrote in parentheses “pause for dramatic effect,” he actually reads out loud the words “pause for dramatic effect.” MacGregor’s speech is not well-received, to put it mildly. He gets a resounding “no” from the group when requesting funding for the exploration trip.

As McGregor verbally flounders and gets flustered on stage, Lily sneaks off into an off-limits room to find the sacred arrowhead that supposedly will lead whoever possesses it to the Tears of the Moon tree. She pries open a crate, sees the arrowhead and steals it. But before Lily can leave undetected, she runs into a museum official named Sir James Hobbs-Coddington (played by Andy Nyman), a stern and greedy bureaucrat.

He’s about to secretly sell the arrowhead to a visiting German royal called Prince Joachim (played by Jesse Plemons), who sees that Lily has the arrowhead and demands that she hand it over. A predictable chase ensues in the room with some unrealistic choreography involving a ladder that leads to Lily hanging out of a window where she could fall and die. Prince Joachim has her cornered and tells Lily that if she hands over the arrowhead, he will rescue her.

Lily gives Prince Joachim a small box that she says has the arrowhead, but he pushes her off the building anyway. Just then, a double-decker bus with an open top drives by, and Lily lands in the bus. Inside the building, Prince Joachim sees that what’s inside the box isn’t the arrowhead but a duck-hunting decoy shaped like a toucan. Meanwhile, MacGregor gets kicked out of the lecture hall with perfect timing to be outside in the same place as Lily when she landed. MacGregor and Lily make their getaway on the bus. Yes, it’s that kind of movie.

You know the rest: Lily and MacGregor find a boat navigator who can take them to the Porto Vehlo, Brazil, where their Amazon jungle adventure will begin. He’s a skipper named Frank Wolff (played by Dwayne Johnson), who makes a meager living as a tour guide to visitors on his run-down steamer boat La Quila. One of Frank’s identifying qualities is that he constantly likes to tell jokes with bad puns. People will either find it charming or annoying.

For example, while ferrying a group of unlucky tourists who have to listen to his bad jokes, Frank points out a pair of toucans and says, “Only two can play.” Frank’s “wink and nudge” tone is: “Get it? The words ‘two can’ rhyme with ‘toucan.'”

He tells another groan-inducing pun joke to the people on his boat: “I used to work in an orange juice factory, but I got canned. I couldn’t concentrate. Yeah, they put the squeeze on me too.” A young girl on the boat tour voices what a lot of viewers will be thinking about Frank and his cheesy jokes: “Make him stop!”

“Jungle Cruise” is very self-aware that the jokes are silly, but after a while it does get very tiresome and comes across as lazy screenwriting not to have anything else about Frank’s personality that’s memorable. In fact, one of the reasons why “Jungle Cruise” is so disappointing is that none of the characters in this movie has an outstanding personality. You know a movie is bad when it has three villains/antagonists, and they’re just watered-down versions of many other movie villains.

The most obvious villain is Prince Joachim, who spouts cliché lines and does everything a stereotypical villain does but twirl his moustache. Plemons struggles with having a believable German accent in this role. It’s like he’s trying to do a parody of a Christoph Waltz villain, but it doesn’t land very well because Prince Joachim’s dialogue is so witless. Prince Joachim doesn’t come across as cunning or dangerous as much as he comes across as a spoiled and stupid royal who wants his way.

Another villain is Aguirre, who shows up later in the movie. The “Jungle Cruise” filmmakers wouldn’t have taken all that time in the beginning of the movie to tell viewers who Aguirre is without him making an appearance. Aguirre could’ve had an interesting personality and story arc, but he mostly just growls his words and gets into fights.

A third villain, who’s in the movie for less than 10 minutes, is Nilo (played by Paul Giamatti, speaking in a questionable Italian accent), a rival riverboat tour operator who is after Frank for debts that Frank owes to Nilo. If Frank doesn’t pay up, Nilo will get Frank’s boat. Nilo is probably the movie’s most useless character that has a well-known actor in the role. Most people who see “Jungle Cruise” won’t remember who the Nilo character is and what he does for a living.

There’s a time-wasting sequence where Frank impersonates Nilo when he first meets Lily, who’s looking to hire a boat navigator. She soon finds out who the real Nilo is, so her first impression of Frank is that he’s a liar and a con artist. The expected bickering between Lily and Frank ensues, which we all know will eventually lead to them feeling romantically attracted to each other.

MacGregor is a high-maintenance dandy who’s upset that he can’t take many of his possessions—such as a large wardrobe of clothes and tennis rackets—with him on Frank’s boat. Frank’s way of dealing with this issue of MacGregor’s extra luggage is to throw away the luggage in the water. How rude. Later in the movie, it’s implied but not said directly that MacGregor is a semi-closeted gay man. MacGregor talks about how grateful he is that Lily is his sister, because she protects him from being persecuted.

Frank has a pet leopard named Proxima, which is introduced in the movie in a very dubious way: Frank has trained the leopard to scare people away in a restaurant. How is that supposed to be funny? The visual effects for this CGI leopard are not very convincing. It looks every inch like the computer-generated animal that it is.

In fact, all of the visual effects in “Jungle Cruise” are very ho-hum or look bogus enough to be distracting to the movie. The hair and makeup are overdone for Lily, who looks too polished in certain action scenes, where realistically her makeup would’ve sweated off of her face, and her hair would be lot more disheveled.

As for the “jungle adventure,” Frank, Lily and MacGregor have the predictable experiences with jungle tribes, as well as chase scenes with Prince Joachim and his henchmen. There’s also the “eccentric exotic person” who seems to be in every jungle movie. In “Jungle Cruise,” this character is a tribe leader named Trader Sam (played by Veronica Falcón), who becomes an ally to these adventurers. And there are more bad pun jokes from Frank.

But when it’s revealed that Frank has a secret identity, that makes the movie go off the rails. Without giving away too much information, it’s enough to say that Frank’s secret identity meant that he grew up in a country where English is not the primary language. However, Frank has a very American accent throughout the movie. This discrepancy can be explained by Frank living enough of his adult life in the U.S. that he now has an American accent.

But the movie’s tone gets a little too dark for a family film when Frank says that he wants to die. (And it’s not a joke.) It puts a weird damper on the rest of the “adventure,” because it’s an unnecessary death wish for the hero of the story to have, after it’s made obvious that he has romantic feelings for Lily. (And yes, they’ve already kissed each other at this point.) Apparently, no one told Frank that telling a potential lover that you want to die is not the way to romance someone.

Anyway, we all know that this “death wish” is a very manipulative part of the story just to create unnecessary drama. After all, why kill off the hero when there are potential “Jungle Cruise” sequels to be made? Do the filmmakers really think viewers are that stupid?

The chemistry between Johnson and Blunt isn’t convincing enough to make Frank and Lily look like they could be in a real long-lasting relationship. Sparring partners in arguments? Yes. But as romantic partners? No. “Jungle Cruise” tries very hard to make it look like Frank and Lily are a great couple. But after this trip is over, it’s hard to imagine that Frank and Lily would enjoy each other’s company and have a lot to talk about in their everyday lives.

In “Jungle Cruise,” Johnson and Blunt do versions of characters that they’ve already played in other movies. There’s nothing fresh or intriguing about their “Jungle Cruise” performances. Johnson just isn’t very good at portraying someone from an era that happened before he was born. The way he talks and his mannerisms are better suited for roles that take place in his contemporary time period.

Everything about “Jungle Cruise” (which is inspired by the Jungle Cruise theme park ride at Disneyland and Disney World) is supposed to be fun, original and adventurous. Instead, too much of it looks and sounds over-calculated and ripped off from other movies. (And the hackneyed “Jungle Cruise” musical score by James Newton Howard is overbearing at times.)

There’s a pivotal scene in “Jungle Cruise” where an entire jungle lights up in purple, but it looks like it was copied from a pivotal scene in Pixar’s 2017 Oscar-winning film “Coco.” Simply put: “Jungle Cruise” takes no bold or creative risks when it could have. “Jungle Cruise” is more like “Jungle Snooze.”

Walt Disney Pictures will release “Jungle Cruise” in U.S. cinemas and at a premium extra cost on Disney+ on July 30, 2021. 

Copyright 2017-2025 Culture Mix
CULTURE MIX