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Jungle Cruise

Where to watch.

Watch Jungle Cruise with a subscription on Disney+, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

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Its craft isn't quite as sturdy as some of the classic adventures it's indebted to, but Jungle Cruise remains a fun, family-friendly voyage.

Funny, full of action, and an all-around good time, Jungle Cruise is a ride well worth taking.

Audience Reviews

Cast & crew.

Jaume Collet-Serra

Dwayne Johnson

Frank Wolff

Emily Blunt

Lily Houghton

Edgar Ramírez

Jack Whitehall

McGregor Houghton

Jesse Plemons

Prince Joachim

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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."

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 ). Setting the revamp squarely in the wheelhouse of blockbuster franchise-starters like " Raiders of the Lost Ark ," " Romancing the Stone " and "The Mummy," and pushing the fantastical elements to the point where the story barely seems to be taking place in our universe, it's a knowingly goofy romp, anchored to the banter between its leads, an English feminist and adventurer played by Emily Blunt and a riverboat captain/adventurer played by Dwayne Johnson .

Notably, however, even though the stars' costumes (and a waterfall sequence) evoke the classic "The African Queen"—John Huston's comic romance/action film starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn ; worth looking up if you've never watched it—the sexual chemistry between the two is nonexistent, save for a few fleeting moments, like when Frank picks up the heroine‘s hand-cranked silent film camera and captures affectionate images of her. At times the leads seem more like a brother and sister needling each other than a will they/won’t they bantering couple. Lack of sexual heat is often (strangely) a bug, or perhaps a feature, in films starring Johnson, the four-quadrant blockbuster king (though not on Johnson’s HBO drama "Ballers"). 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.

Blunt's character, Lily Houghton, is a well-pedigreed adventurer who gathers up maps belonging to her legendary father and travels to the Amazon circa 1916 to find the Tears of the Moon, petals from a "Tree of Life"-type of fauna that can heal all infirmities. She and her snooty, pampered brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall) hire Frank "Skipper" Wolff (Johnson) to bring them to their destination. The only notable concession to the original theme park ride comes here: Wolff's day job is taking tourists upriver and making cheesy jokes in the spirit of "hosts" on Disney Jungle Cruise rides of yore. On the mission, Johnson immediately settles into a cranky but funny old sourpuss vibe, a la John Wayne or Harrison Ford , and inhabits it amiably enough, even though buoyant, almost childlike optimism comes more naturally to him than world-weary gruffness.

The supporting cast is stacked with overqualified character players. 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. Jesse Plemons plays the main baddie, Prince Joachim, who wants to filch the power of the petals for the Kaiser back in Germany (he's Belloq to the stars' Indy and Marion, trying to swipe the Ark). Unsurprisingly, given his track record, Plemons steals the film right out from under its leads.

Collet-Serra keeps the action moving along, pursuing a more classical style than is commonplace in recent live-action Disney product (by which I mean, the blocking and editing have a bit of elegance, and you always know where characters are in relation to each other). The editing errs on the side of briskness to such an extent that affecting, beautiful, or spectacular images never get to linger long enough to become iconic. 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.

But the staging and execution of the chases and fights compensates. Derivative of films that were themselves highly derivative, "Jungle Cruise" has the look and feel of a paycheck gig for all involved, but everyone seems to be having a great time, including the filmmakers.

In theaters and on Disney+ for a premium charge starting Friday, July 30th.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film credits.

Jungle Cruise (2021)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of adventure violence.

127 minutes

Dwayne Johnson as Frank Wolff

Emily Blunt as Dr. Lily Houghton

Jack Whitehall as McGregor Houghton

Edgar Ramírez as Aguirre

Jesse Plemons as Prince Joachim

Paul Giamatti as Nilo

Jaume Collet-Serra

Writer (story)

Glenn Ficarra
Josh Goldstein
John Norville

Cinematographer

Flavio Martínez Labiano
Joel Negron
James Newton Howard

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Jungle Cruise review: Disney’s river adventure makes it easy to get swept away

Disney’s film vault is filled with blockbusters, but the studio doesn’t have the best record when it comes to turning its popular theme park attractions into movies. Out of six attempts at starting a new franchise, only Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl managed to achieve the kind of success one expects from a Disney feature. All of the rest — from 1997’s Tower of Terror to 2015’s Tomorrowland — have been critical and commercial disappointments.

Three times the charm

More Pirates, less Haunted Mansion

Dark and delightful

Rolling on the river.

Disney is persistent, though, and that’s good — because the latest ride-to-film adaptation, Jungle Cruise , feels like the fresh hit they’ve been searching for all along.

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra , Jungle Cruise casts the wonderfully talented Emily Blunt as Dr. Lily Houghton, a scientist during the World War I era who refuses to let the oppressive, male-dominated scientific community hamper her quest for the Tree of Life, an arboreal enigma of the deep jungle rumored to have magical healing properties. Along with her brother, a dapper British bachelor played by Jack Whitehall, Lily embarks on a journey into the jungle guided by Frank Wolff, a charismatic steamboat captain played by Dwayne Johnson. The trio is menaced by threats from both the jungle itself and a sinister German royal played by Jesse Plemons, who wants the Tree of Life’s secrets for his own nefarious purposes.

It’s no surprise that both Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt are endlessly entertaining to watch in Jungle Cruise , as the pair have proven themselves many times over in roles that blend action and humor in films that also rely heavily on visual effects. They’re both in top form in the film, with great chemistry that makes every scene they share entertaining.

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More unexpected, however, is the energy and positive attributes that Jack Whitehall brings to the film in a role that could have easily become a disposable, third-wheel character. Whitehall’s character initially appears to be the typical caricature of a British dandy, but as the film unfolds, the combination of the Bad Education actor’s performance and the script’s unwillingness to let him disappear into the background make him one of the story’s most fascinating, fun characters.

While Johnson and Blunt hit all the right notes to keep Jungle Cruise funny and sweep you along, it’s Whitehall’s character that keeps the story feeling fresh and less predictable.

More Pirates , less Haunted Mansion

On the surface, J ungle Cruise seems to follow the formula that made the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise so successful: Take two, strong-willed lead characters destined for romantic entanglement, add a charming wildcard to the mix, and fill their adventure with plenty of dark, fantastic eye candy. It’s hard to argue against the formula, too, given the Pirates franchise’s $4.5 billion dollar haul across five films.

Fortunately, Jungle Cruise puts its own stamp on that basic structure, with Johnson and Blunt filling the film with a level of charisma and witty banter to match its impressive action, and Whitehall’s performance complementing those of the leads instead of distracting from them.

The story also strikes just the right balance of humor, heart, and horror — much like the aforementioned Pirates films. There’s an emotional core to each of the characters in Jungle Cruise that comes across enough to give them depth without bogging down the story, and they play off each other well, whether they’re sharing a sad memory, spouting bad puns, or fleeing all manner of deadly threats — supernatural or otherwise.

Much like the Pirates of the Caribbean films, Jungle Cruise delivers plenty of impressive visual effects that are both beautiful and terrifying to behold.

Johnson and Blunt are no stranger to effects-driven features, and Jungle Cruise delivers some truly memorable moments of spectacle . As the story progresses, the trio of adventurers finds themselves contending with various magical threats in addition to dangers presented by humans and the usual range of jungle creatures. Without venturing into spoiler territory, these supernatural enemies are depicted in some creative, technically impressive ways that make each enemy stand out from the rest.

That attention to detail made Davy Jones’ crew of mutated, ghostly pirates in 2006’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest one of the film’s most memorable elements, and it’s on full display in Jungle Cruise when the story embraces its mystical dark potential.

Whether Jungle Cruise kicks off a new franchise for Disney or ends up a standalone adventure, the film offers an extremely satisfying, exciting movie experience for the whole family.

Johnson and Blunt are at their best in the film, with Whitehall making a good story even better with his performance. All of that entertainment is supported by a great cast of secondary characters and breathtaking visual effects that make the world of Jungle Cruise vibrant and enchanting throughout the trio’s adventure.

It’s no simple task to turn a theme-park attraction into a compelling big-screen adventure, but a great cast, impressive visual effects, and a fun story help Disney make it look easy in Jungle Cruise .

Disney’s Jungle Cruise premieres July 30 in theaters and on the Disney+ streaming service with Premier Access (at an additional cost).

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emily blunt as lily and dwayne the rock johnson as frank. they stand on a riverboat, lily slightly in front, blonde hair loose. frank is behind here, a strong, tall man wearing a sailor’s hat

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Disney’s Jungle Cruise has the same goofy charm as the ride that spawned it

The movie is a hodgepodge of recycled tropes that mostly works

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A Disney movie based on a theme-park attraction will always be a huge gamble. On one hand, the studio could end up with a massive blockbuster franchise like Pirates of the Caribbean ; on the other, it could sink into the doldrums of The Haunted Mansion movie . Unlike most other legacy Disney IPs, its rides don’t necessarily have background lore, or characters people are invested in. They create experiences through atmospheric elements, but there’s little concrete narrative involved. So a Disney theme-park movie is mostly out to capture a feeling , and somehow transport that feeling into a story.

It’s been six years since Disney tried its hand at a new theme-park-related movie (and 2015’s Tomorrowland marked a huge loss for the company), but after more than 15 years of back-to-the-drawing-board development cycles, Jungle Cruise is splashing into action in theaters and on Disney Plus with Premier Access. Based on the ride that debuted in the original Disneyland park in 1955, one famously full of cheesy jokes (and outdated racist imagery ), Jungle Cruise feels like a lot of previous period adventure movies, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. While a fair share of moments lean too heavily on older movies, including many from Disney’s own canon, director Jaume Collet-Serra (of the ridiculously engaging shark movie The Shallows ) puts just enough twists on old tropes to make it unique, while preserving some tried-and-true aspects of adventure stories. The movie hits some doldrums, but when the engine works, it’s smooth cruising.

[ Ed. note : This review contains some slight spoilers for Jungle Cruise. ]

lily and her brother mcgregor look out the boat’s window

Jungle Cruise starts in 1916, when adventurous botanist Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) sets out to find a magical plant rumored to be able to cure all illnesses. Along with her stuffy brother McGregor (Jack Whitehall), she treks to the Amazon and recruits the help of wisecracking, cynical steamboat captain Frank (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson). Hot on their tail is bombastic Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons), an ambitious German aristocrat who seeks the tree for his own needs. There’s also a legend about the cursed conquistadors who originally sought out the tree, but it doesn’t become important until midway through.

The setup of an intrepid scholar, her posh brother, and the dashing rogue they reluctantly recruit may seem familiar, since the 1999 version of The Mummy did it first. But Jungle Cruise has its own spin on the characters. For one, Lily isn’t really a fish out of water in the adventuring life. She takes to the perilous trek easily. The emphasis on “strong female character” tropes in her scripting might seem annoyingly defiant, in a “not like other girls” way. For instance, because she decides to flout 1910s convention and wear practical pants during her jungle adventures, the male characters have words for her, which she just tunes out. (Frank actually nicknames her “Pants.”) Her outfit is actually one of the most pragmatic getups worn by a female character in a recent action-adventure movie, but of course, it still draws comments, because no matter what a woman wears, it has to be Part of the Narrative.

lily and mcgregor walking into a bar. he wears a stuffy suit, while she is in proper adventuring attire

Thankfully, Blunt brings a lot of charm to the role, and she’s never drawn as turning her nose up at traditionally girly things. Instead, the emphasis is about her pursuing her goals of helping the world and seeking her own adventure. Frank, meanwhile, could have been written as a typical roguish adventurer, but the version on screen makes a ton of dad jokes and is generally goofier than the Indiana Joneses and Rick O’Connells of the world. He embodies the silly nature of the Disneyland ride — his first scene is basically full of theme-park zingers. (The fact that the writing team managed to fit in the beloved “backside of water” joke is honestly impressive.)

The characters are still all stock types more than well-rounded, dynamic people. They check off all the boxes on their expected stories: Will Frank learn to be more trusting? Yes. Will Frank and Lily banter and eventually fall for each other? Of course. Will McGregor get kidnapped? You know it! But why fix what isn’t broken? These are formulaic elements, but they’re still gratifying, and they come with just enough quirk and pizazz to keep the plot interesting.

Jungle Cruise is beholden not just to the antiquated tropes of archaeological adventure movies , but also the ride’s own problematic legacy. To their credit, the filmmakers do their best to subvert that legacy. The choice to have the coveted treasure be part of the natural world, instead of the ruins of an ancient civilization, already helps. But the best adaptation is that the indigenous people of the jungle are civilized, and they’re Frank’s buddies — they only attack the tourists because they have an agreement where he pays them to scare travelers for extra thrills. The leader of the tribe — the infamous Trader Sam, originally an outdated park character — is a woman in the movie. She doesn’t get a lot of screen time, and is more of an Easter egg than a woman of color with a story of her own, but at least the filmmakers are acknowledging the ride’s past and considering how to modernize their thinking.

a tribe of indigenous people as seen in jungle cruise

The adventure does mix in supernatural elements that add an edge, but their mid-film introduction comes across as too little, too late. The legend of the cursed conquistadors is confirmed about halfway through the movie, as a ripoff of Davy Jones ’ crew from the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean movies . They’re bound to a jungle instead of a ship, but with the same sort of body-horror modifications. While the one fellow with snakes rippling under his skin, ready to strike, is certainly a fright, the others are basically just reskins of the Flying Dutchman’s pirates. They also feel like obligatory scary creatures, only there because Collet-Serra feels like something spooky should be guarding the tree. Even when they get a smidgen of backstory, it’s not enough to make them anything but environmental obstacles to get in the way of the final fight.

As for the fight scenes themselves, while they all have something distinct about them, muddled visuals and pacing often detract from the enjoyment. An exciting chase through the port after Lily is abducted immediately turns into a submarine face-off, without much breathing time. It makes a sequence that should be thrilling drag on longer than its energy allows, which holds true for other action-heavy scenes as well. The final setpiece, which should be the biggest, most high-stakes fight of them all, is completely covered in shadows, and hard to see.

Still, Jungle Cruise packs in everything satisfying about an adventure movie, with some of its own twists. There are cryptic archaeological clues and spooky legends, along with a fair share of peril. Many of its elements feel lifted from other movies — maybe a necessity in a property with so few meaningful tropes of its own. But for the most part, it’s still an entertaining ride, instilling the goofy energy of the theme-park attraction into the adventure with the new spin it needed.

Jungle Cruise is available in theaters and on Disney Plus with Premier Access on July 30.

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‘Jungle Cruise’ Review: Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt in Disney’s Bumptious Rom-Com Theme-Park Joyride

The two stars have an undeniable plucky chemistry in a fantasy adventure so rollicking it threatens to turn romance into one more special effect.

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In “ Jungle Cruise ,” a Disney adventure that demonstrates how basing a movie on a theme-park ride may now be a more natural occurence than adapting it from a novel, Emily Blunt plays Dr. Lily Houghton, a London researcher-explorer who’s as fearless, in her demure way, as Indiana Jones, and Dwayne Johnson is Frank Wolff, the friendly huckster of a river-boat captain who ferries her down the Amazon at the height of World War I.

He wears a hat just like the one Humphrey Bogart wore in “The African Queen,” and she wears pants — which, of course, were an early adaptation of Katharine Hepburn’s. For anyone old enough, or old-movie-centered enough, to care (which is maybe five percent of this movie’s prospective audience), the banter between these two could be said to evoke Bogart and Hepburn — or, at least, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in “Romancing the Stone.” Frank, a charlatan with a chip on his shoulder, calls Lily “Pants” and tells godawful jokes. She call him “Skippy” and rolls her eyes. And as they go at each other with gusto and bite and a touch of venom, you can sit back and feel, at moments, like you’re at a romantic comedy.

But it’s like watching a romantic comedy while strapped to a roller-coaster with a VR headset on. “Jungle Cruise” is at once a love story, a made-for-4DX action movie, a “Pirates of the Caribbean”-style fairy tale featuring a ghostly conquistador (Edgar Ramirez) and his pewter-armored henchman with digital snakes slithering through their bodies, and God knows what else. Blunt, appealingly brash, makes mincemeat of Frank the lug but lets you know she likes him anyway, and Johnson knows how to deliver a genial putdown that still stings. They’ve got a chemistry, no doubt about it, but in a funny way the romantic pluck of “Jungle Cruise” plays like one more trick effect. You can practically touch the one-liners as they ping off the screen.

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I enjoyed the movie more than I did the two recent “Jumanji” films, because you can kind of pretend that there’s something at stake, and the director, Jaume Collet-Serra, stages it all with a certain breathless bravura. Leaving the dock in the Brazilian jungle where Frank plays P.T. Barnum to gullible tourists, our heroes set off in his barely seaworthy steamboat, only to have to get out of the way of a torpedo launched by Prince Joachim, a Teutonic megalomaniac played by Jesse Plemons with a smirky flourish. The ship plows right into Frank’s docking station, which blows up real good.

There’s a turbulent sequence in which the boat speeds toward a waterfall, and a funny one that fools us into thinking, for a moment, that the movie is going to exploit the woefully outdated stereotype of a “primitive” tribe of cannibals wearing skull masks. (It’s actually mocking it.) Lily has brought her brother, MacGregor, along for the ride, and he’s a pampered dandy who think it’s not dinner unless you’re wearing a dinner jacket. He’s played by Jack Whitehall, in a pinpoint performance that benefits from not having to repress the implication that the character is gay, though it might have benefited even more if his coming-out speech to Frank didn’t dance around the subject nearly as torturously as the old repression.

“Jungle Cruise” is a movie that implicitly asks: What’s wrong with a little good old-fashioned escapism? The answer is: Absolutely nothing, and “Jungle Cruise” is old-fashioned, expect that it pelts the audience with entertainment in such a lively yet bumptious way that at times you may wish you were wearing protective gear. Lily has in her possession a mystical arrowhead, which everyone wants, because it’s the totem that will lead her to the Tears of the Moon, a legendary tree (it’s like the Fountain of Youth) with magical healing properties. That sounds like a Disney MacGuffin, and is, except what struck me after a while is that the real preoccupation of “Jungle Cruise” isn’t romance, or even adventure, but metamorphosis. Tree vines grow and wrap themselves around historic explorers; a fearsome tiger is revealed to be a pussycat; a key character turns out to be 400 years old; a theme-park ride turns into a love story and then back again. All that remains unchanged is the price of an oversize box of Raisinets.

Reviewed at AMC Lincoln Square, New York, July 26, 2021. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 127 MIN.

Production: A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures release of a Davis Entertainment Company, Seven Bucks/Flynn Picture Co. production. Producers: John Davis, John Fox, Beau Flynn, Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia, Hiram Garcia. Executive producers: Scott Sheldon, Doug Merrifield.
Crew: Director: Jaume Collet-Serra. Screenplay: Michael Green, Glenn Ficarra, John Requa. Camera: Flavio Labiano. Editor: Joel Negron. Music: James Newton Howard.
With: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Édgar Ramírez, Jack Whitehall, Jesse Plemons, Paul Giamatti, Veronica Falcón, Dani Rovira, Quim Gutierrez.

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Jungle Cruise (2021)

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Disney’s Jungle Cruise Is Murder

“The jungle,” Werner Herzog used to say, “is murder.” Although Disney’s Jungle Cruise is ostensibly based on the popular theme-park ride, one could say that it has taken Herzog’s immortal maxim as a kind of surface inspiration. “Know this about the jungle,” Dwayne Johnson’s riverboat captain Frank says early in the film, “everything you see wants to kill you — and can.” There are other Herzog callbacks in the film: The villains include the Spanish conquistador Lope de Aguirre (the subject of one of Herzog’s best-known films, Aguirre, the Wrath of God ) as well as an obsessive German aristocrat named Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons), who seems to sport Herzog’s accent ; there’s even an extended gag at one point about the Herzogian way Joachim pronounces “jungle”: “chonk-leh.” Whatever. I chuckled. Sue me.

Herzog is an odd reference point, surely, but that’s also in keeping with the central tension in Jungle Cruise , between the darker, more intense and exciting movie it clearly wants to be and the mealymouthed CGI panderfest that it is. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra — a filmmaker previously known for gonzo thrillers like Orphan and The Shallows and some of the more compelling entries in the Liam Neeson dadsploitation subgenre — the picture might have amounted to something had it been able to deliver on the one essential element any kind of adventure (even one made primarily for kids) needs: a real sense of danger.

It didn’t need to be this way, surely. The opening scenes show some promise. We first meet the spirited Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) as she sneaks around in the back rooms of the Royal Geographic Society, looking for an ancient arrowhead that holds the key to finding a magic, all-healing Amazonian blossom called the Tears of the Moon. But it’s 1916, two years into the Great War, and there’s a sinister German aristocrat — the aforementioned Joachim, who may or may not be Kaiser Wilhelm’s son — also after this artefact.

In his previous works, Collet-Serra proved quite adept playing with screen geography, and he brings charm and energy to these early scenes of Lily maneuvering around this place while Joachim pursues her, each of them using the various objects around them. Similarly, when we meet Frank “Skipper” Wolff (Johnson), the captain of a decaying, rickety Amazon riverboat, we see him conning tourists into seeing fake sights such as a phony giant hippo, a rickety waterfall, and a group of supposedly savage natives whom he’s secretly paid off to scare the foreigners.

There’s a Rube Goldbergian verve to these early sequences, and by the time Lily and her brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall) have employed Frank to take them into the heart of the Amazon, you might be fooled into thinking that Jungle Cruise is poised to recapture the swashbuckling magic of classics like Raiders of the Lost Ark , The Mask of Zorro , the 1999 iteration of The Mummy , or the original Pirates of the Caribbean , with a little African Queen thrown in. It certainly liberally borrows from just about all of them.

But such films were also not afraid to scare us, to make us care about their characters by putting them in real danger. And here, Jungle Cruise sadly falls back on its corporate theme-park origins. It’s a safety-first kind of movie, seemingly too afraid to ever make us fear for our heroes. A jaguar that attacks early on quickly turns out to be Frank’s pet, Proxima (another aide in his many scams). It would probably constitute a spoiler to give more details about other elements that are initially presented as sources of fear but turn out ultimately to be harmless. (Even the supposedly psychopathic Prince Joachim comes off as weirdly cuddly at times, with Plemons playing him as a subdued bore. Why exactly is this movie set during WWI anyway? Were they afraid to make Joachim a Nazi?) It feels at times like the filmmakers are reluctant to suggest that the Amazon might actually be a dangerous place. Maybe that sort of thing makes for admirable messaging (does it?), but it certainly doesn’t quicken the pulse.

The exception to all this winds up proving the rule: When the aforementioned Lope de Aguirre (Edgar Ramirez) and his men, who all supposedly vanished upriver in the 16th century, come back as a ragtag supernatural phantom army to fight our heroes, they’re clearly meant to provide the menace that the film has been so lacking. And to be fair, a flashback to how they got their curse is one of the film’s highlights; if nothing else, it gives Collet-Serra an opportunity to briefly show off his horror chops. But once these villains enter the story, their presence, even in its finer details and twists, so recalls the far-superior Pirates of the Caribbean that we might wonder if we’re just watching something created on the same software as that earlier picture, only with a different set of features selected from the drop-down menus.

Even so, derivativeness and predictability aren’t always fatal flaws. Jungle Cruise could have been saved had it at least provided some decent comedy and romance. On the latter front, Johnson and Blunt don’t have much chemistry. The film has a good idea in positioning them as opposing temperaments — the more bickering, the more chance of a spark, cinematically speaking — but even that winds up being half-baked. In the end, they don’t argue all that much.

Over and over, we can see the far superior movie Jungle Cruise wants to be: a freewheeling, romantic, swashbuckling epic about a couple of beautiful, brave souls who bicker their way into each other’s hearts, all the while facing off against the many dangers of the jungle and a variety of villains both human and supernatural. But it is so not that movie. And the clarity of its aspirations just makes the film’s downfall that much more pathetic, like a baseball player pointing to the home run he’s about to hit and then completely whiffing and landing on his ass.

Meanwhile, Whitehall is given the thankless task of portraying what is supposedly Disney’s most “out” gay character yet. The film still plays it kind of coy: Talking to Frank one night about how he couldn’t get married, MacGregor says that he “had to tell the lady in question that I couldn’t accept the offer — or indeed any offer, given that my interests happily lay elsewhere.” He then adds, “Uncle threatened to disinherit me. Friends and family turned their backs, all because of who I love.” Maybe this could have been a touching character note, but it doesn’t actually do much to develop MacGregor; his confession seems to exist primarily to show what a decent guy Frank is in accepting him. MacGregor, meanwhile, remains the butt of many of the movie’s (mostly unfunny) jokes — a hopelessly vain dandy who pees himself at the first sign of danger. I’m not sure any of this is progress. The jungle might not kill you, but Jungle Cruise could kill your soul.

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‘Jungle Cruise’: The Rock and Emily Blunt Go Up the Disney River, Without a Paddle

By David Fear

Blame Johnny Depp.

I mean, listen, feel free to blame the actor for any number of things , if you want. But specifically, in terms of riot-act reading, let’s go back to 2003, when Mr. Depp slapped on a head scarf, trotted out his best Keef Richards wobble and slur, and turned what felt like a Disney Hail-Mary I.P. cash-in into a cash cow. No one expected a movie based on an amusement park ride based on creaky, age-old seafaring stories to give birth to a popular franchise; no one expected a movie about 18th century pirates to show up in the early part of the 21st century, period. (What is this, the Watchmen universe ?)

Depp is responsible for turning the Pirates of the Caribbean films into hits, even when the series slipped into diminishing-returns territory. More importantly, he helped to prove a Mouse House theorem: When it comes to licensing, exploiting and rebooting, why stop at your best-known characters? Find the right actor, and you can sell your park properties’ greatest hits as intellectual properties too. If you can hire a better-than-decent director and keep the pace frantic, all the better. The movies then direct customers back to the park, and the circle of l̶i̶f̶e̶ commerce continues. The question was not whether this was the beginning of a trend but what the next “title” would be and how soon we’d be E-ticketing to a theater near us.

The reprieve lasted longer than we thought, enough to lull us into a false sense of security. Maybe it’s unfair to blame the ghost of Jack Sparrow and the Pirates boom-bust of yore for Jungle Cruise . But dear Walt in the heavens, the shadow of that series looms large over this attempt to sell the Magic Kingdom’s vintage, colonialism-a-go-go boat ride as the next big endless-summer-movie thing. To be fair, so too does the specter of the Indiana Jones films, The African Queen, steampunk, old-school Werner Herzog, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rudyard Kipling, Jules Verne, the entire previous filmography of the Rock, that book on Ponce de Leon you forgot to return to your library in fourth grade and every boys’ adventure ever written. Still: the wisecracking, trickster rascal? The hyper-capable and social-sexism-thwarting heroine? The mystical, supernatural villains, and their imperialistic, human bad-guy counterpart? The set pieces that update bits of ye olde derring-do, often digitally and occasionally successfully? You’ve seen this film. Only the hats, the source material’s location in the park and the size of the biceps have changed.

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Stream Jungle Cruise on Disney+

First, your lovable scamp of a skipper: His name is Frank Wolff, but feel free to call him Dwayne Johnson. This is a great example of what a movie star, a real one, does when you hire them: gives you their screen persona and molds it to fit the container without changing the essential recipe. It’s the one big difference between this and other Disney’s other big cinéma du amusement park entry, in that Depp injected everything an odd sense of unpredictability and Johnson gives us the reassuring feeling we’re watching a Dwayne Johnson movie. Except this time, it happens to be 1916, we’re deep in the Brazilian rain forests, and the star is smiling instead of seriously scowling. Wolff is a tour guide who runs his trusty boat up and down the Amazon for gullible tourists, which — yup — is distinguished by the captain’s facepalm-inspiring banter. Maybe you forgot for a nanosecond that the movie is based on the ride distinguished by a running commentary of puns ranging from bad to very bad to “make it stop, make it stop!!” Anyone who’s been to Disneyland in the past 50 years will recognize the jokes Johnson tells to his hostages (sorry, “customers”). The meta-gag is that even folks in 1916 thought these groaners were god-awful.

Meanwhile, in Merry Olde England, a young man named MacGregor Houghton (Jack Whitehall) is making a plea to ye olde stuffy historical organization to let him access an arrowhead recently found in the Amazon. This artifact, about to be tucked away in their archives, is allegedly the key to unlocking “the Tears of the Moon” — bright flowers found blossoming only on the mystical Tree of Life, and the obsession/downfall of Spanish conquistador Don Lope de Aguirre (Edgar Ramírez). He’s not the Houghton to keep an eye on, however: That would be MacGregor’s sister, Lily ( Emily Blunt ), the headstrong adventurer of the family. She’s keen to prove that the rumors surrounding the magical healing properties of this foliage are true, and thus cure all ills. Yet another party, Germany’s Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons), would also like the arrowhead. There’s a world war going, you see. Having access to the tree’s bounty might give his nation the winning edge.

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Jungle cruise, common sense media reviewers.

Ride-based adventure is fun, if predictable; peril, scares.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Promotes courage, perseverance, teamwork. Characte

Lily is a pioneering botanist and adventurer -- a

Frequent peril/tension, action violence, physical

Lily and Frank banter and flirt, eventually sharin

"Oh my God," "ruddy," "fresh hell," "crusty old fa

This movie is based on/promotes a Disney ride. Lot

Adults drink in taverns, where some background cha

Positive Messages

Promotes courage, perseverance, teamwork. Characters work together and think creatively to defeat a curse, vengeful enemies, a sociopathic villain. Characters' stories/journeys promote idea of personal growth and value of acceptance and living a nontraditional life. You don't have to be what everyone expects you to be.

Positive Role Models

Lily is a pioneering botanist and adventurer -- a Ph.D. who's never afraid of being the only woman in a room. She's brave, smart, resourceful, goes after what she wants (often bending rules to do so). Frank is knowledgeable, protective. Both are willing to put themselves in danger for their missions -- and each other. MacGregor is a dedicated brother who accompanies and supports Lily; he implies but never says outright that she was the only person who stuck by him when he realized he was gay. Native Amazonians are initially portrayed as cannibal warriors out to capture (and eat) foreigners, but ( spoiler alert ) it turns out to be for show. Still, the story exploits those stereotypes and certain others (MacGregor is fussy and high maintenance, Joachim is cartoonishly German, etc.), and Joachim's accent is played for humor.

Violence & Scariness

Frequent peril/tension, action violence, physical comedy, creepy imagery -- including conquistadores being turned to stone or coming back to "life" while made of bees, snakes, etc. Native Amazonians are killed, a villain is squashed. At one point, it's suggested that a key character has died. People get abducted, slapped, stabbed, bitten by snakes and piranhas, threatened/attacked by a jaguar. Falls, chases, explosions. Torpedo and guns fired, swords and knives brandished. A villain callously smashes bees. Amazonians are described as cannibals, but ( spoiler alert ) it's just for show. Arguments/yelling.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Lily and Frank banter and flirt, eventually sharing longing looks. Characters share a kiss. A conversation about extracting a knife borders on suggestive.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"Oh my God," "ruddy," "fresh hell," "crusty old farts," "shove it up your association," "booga booga," "wimpy," etc.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

This movie is based on/promotes a Disney ride. Lots of merchandise tie-ins off camera.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Adults drink in taverns, where some background characters seem to be drinking heavily. Characters drink whiskey from a flask, liquor from bottles. A jaguar drinks spilled wine, gets tipsy. MacGregor brings an entire suitcase of liquor on board.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Jungle Cruise is an action-fantasy adventure inspired by the classic Disneyland ride. Set in 1916, it follows intrepid Dr. Lily Houghton ( Emily Blunt ), who hires skipper Frank Wolff ( Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson ) to guide her and her brother down the Amazon River in search of a mythical healing tree. Violence and peril are the biggest issues: Expect frequent danger, creepy cursed villains (as well as a cartoonishly evil German baddie), weapons (guns, torpedoes, swords, knives), an implied significant death (and some actual less significant ones), threatening snakes, and a jaguar that looks more vicious than she actually is. Adult characters drink from flasks and bottles, and an animal gets tipsy. One conversation about removing a knife from someone's body could be perceived as suggestive (though the double meaning will likely go over kids' heads), and there's some flirty banter and a couple of kisses. Without saying it outright, one character comes out to another, who's supportive. While main characters demonstrate impressive courage, perseverance, and teamwork, the movie's initial depiction of Native Amazonians as a tribe of angry cannibals is concerning, even though ( spoiler alert ) it turns out it's largely for show. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (35)
Kids say (66)

Based on 35 parent reviews

Turn it off about an hour in...

Action and adventure, what's the story.

Set in 1916, JUNGLE CRUISE opens with bold botanist Dr. Lily Houghton ( Emily Blunt ) stealing an Amazonian arrowhead from an elite -- and anti-woman -- British explorers' club. The artifact is supposed to lead Houghton to a mysterious location on the Amazon River where legendary healing flowers bloom on an ancient tree. Lily and her brother, MacGregor ( Jack Whitehall ), head to the Amazon and hire brash skipper Frank Wolff ( Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson ) to guide them on the perilous river trip. Along the way, Lily and Frank must avoid not only the natural dangers of the Amazon but also a villainous German prince ( Jesse Plemons ) who's also searching for the tree, as well as a group of Spanish conquistadores who need the flower's petals to reverse their immortal curse.

Is It Any Good?

The irresistibly charming stars help make this adventurous, occasionally swashbuckling ride adaptation amusing, if not as memorable as The Mummy or Pirates of the Caribbean . Johnson can make nearly any character likable; here, Frank's silly, punny jokes are also a fun nod to the Disney ride's vibe. Blunt, likewise, is ideally cast as the pioneering Dr. Houghton. Lily bucks social mores of the time by having a job and a Ph.D., knowing how to defend herself, and even wearing trousers (Frank calls her "Pants"). She also has a refreshingly close relationship with her brother, who's posh and fussy but is still willing to follow her into murky, life-threatening situations. Other members of the cast are underused -- like Paul Giamatti as a local riverboat mogul and Edgar Ramirez as head conquistador Aguirre -- or they overact, like Plemons' caricature of a sociopathic German villain, Prince Joachim.

The movie's landscaping and production art are vibrant and immersive, and director Jaume Collet-Serra should be applauded for making sure to organically include themes of gender, class, and discrimination against the Amazonian natives -- without being preachy. Still, the movie's portrayal of those natives is a bit cringey, even if the movie course-corrects to subvert the same stereotypes it initially seems to be perpetuating. Luckily, Blunt and Johnson cheerfully elevate the story enough to make audiences gloss over some of the screenplay's missteps and enjoy the ride.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the level of violence in Jungle Cruise . Does stylized or fantasy violence impact viewers differently than more realistic violence?

How do Lily's actions convey that she is both brave and smart? Do you consider her a role model ? What character strengths does she demonstrate?

How is drinking depicted in the movie? Are there consequences for any character's drinking? Why does that matter?

Did you notice any stereotypes in the film? Why is the initial depiction of the Native Amazonians problematic? Is it excused by the fact that the tribe is in on the joke/plan?

Movie Details

In theaters : July 30, 2021
On DVD or streaming : November 12, 2021
Cast : Emily Blunt , Dwayne Johnson , Edgar Ramirez , Jack Whitehall
Director : Jaume Collet-Serra
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors, Polynesian/Pacific Islander actors, Latino actors
Studio : Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Genre : Action/Adventure
Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Adventures , Brothers and Sisters
Character Strengths : Courage , Perseverance , Teamwork
Run time : 127 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : sequences of adventure violence
Last updated : April 22, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt in Jungle Cruise.

Jungle Cruise review – theme park ride leaves the handbrake on

Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson fail to ignite in a Disney adventure that’s long on tropes and short on sparks

B y casting Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson , two actors of rare personal charm, this Disney adventure should have managed to transcend its somewhat unpromising origins (it was, like Pirates of the Car ibbean , based on a theme park ride). But for some reason, while both are perfectly likable independently (Blunt in particular is a feisty joy as scientist Lily Houghton), they fail to gel on screen.

Their lack of chemistry is not fatal to the film – director Jaume Collet-Serra creates a romp of a picture booby-trapped with adventure movie tropes (arcane curses, snakes, evil Germans) which, while they might seem familiar to Indiana Jones fans, still combine to make for a decent family flick. It’s just that a movie that requires its characters to “mend a broken heart” as part of an ancient riddle should probably have a heart to begin with.

Action and adventure films
The Observer
Emily Blunt
Dwayne Johnson (The Rock)
Walt Disney Company

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DVD & Streaming

Jungle Cruise

Action/Adventure , Comedy , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

July 30, 2021
Dwayne Johnson as Frank Wolff; Emily Blunt as Lily Houghton; Jack Whitehall as MacGregor Houghton; Edgar Ramírez as Aguirre; Jesse Plemons as Prince Joachim; Paul Giamatti as Nilo; Veronica Falcón as Trader Sam

Home Release Date

Jaume Collet-Serra

Distributor

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Movie Review

Conquistadors were suckers for a good legend.

They scoured the New World looking for El Dorado. They discovered Florida seeking the Fountain of Youth. And one intrepid Spaniard—a fellow named Aguirre—even dared brave the mighty Amazon in search of the Tears of the Moon, petals from a hidden tree that would supposedly cure any disease.

Those petals would’ve been nice, given all the diseases that Conquistadors introduced to the New World, but no matter. Aguirre and his cohorts disappeared in those Brazilian jungles long ago, and the Tears of the Moon faded into barely remembered myth—a bedtime story for a few, perhaps, but nothing more.

But Lily Houghton and her brother, MacGregor, heard those bedtime stories and believed . And Lily believes something else, too: That she can succeed where Aguirre and everyone else has failed.

And given that the year’s 1916—the middle of the Great War, when millions of people are dying from battle and disease—the Tears have never been more needed.

Lily has maps of important twisty, turny Amazon tributaries—maps allegedly made by Aguirre’s own cartographer. Soon she has an important arrowhead, too, which she thinks may be the key to unlocking the Tears’ centuries-old secret. Now all she and her brother need is a boat captain to take them upriver, through the mysterious and perilous jungle. Someone brave. Strong. Honest.

Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

Frank Wolff isn’t honest. In fact, he makes his living lying. He takes gullible tourists upriver and shows them the (ahem) wonders and terrors of the Amazon, be they fearsome headhunters (actors in Frank’s employ) or horrifying hippopotami (not native to Brazil) or the skeletonized remains of dead conquistadors (well, the skeletons look real enough). He glories in terrible puns and proudly shows his guests the “eighth wonder of the world”—a pitiful little manmade waterfall that Frank sails behind. “The backside of water!” he proudly exclaims to his less-than-impressed clientele.

Why, when he first meets Lily, Frank is even lying about being Frank . She finds him in the office of another (much more successful) riverboat captain, apparently picking a lock. She mistakes him for the (much more successful) riverboat captain, and who is Frank to say otherwise?

Still, Frank is roughly the size of a boat himself, which suggests he’s strong. He must be brave, too, living as he does in this little-explored jungle. And he works cheap.

But the dangers Frank, Lily and MacGregor face are no lie. To get to where the Tears of the Moon supposedly can be found, they’ll have to brave wild animals, fearsome rapids and maybe even a German U-Boat or two.

And the deep, dark jungle hides a secret, as well. Those old, lost conquistadors might not be quite dead yet. Yes, the Tears of the Moon make a tantilizing bedtime story—one that Lily banks on being much more. But before this jungle cruise is over, she might be shedding a few tears of her own.

Positive Elements

Lily wants to find the Tears of the Moon for a whole bunch of reasons: To redeem her family name; to mark herself as a scientist of note; and because it’d be fun. But above all, she believes the Tears can save lives—lives that, at this juncture in history, are being lost at a staggering pace. “I don’t have to know someone to care,” she tells Frank.

The riverboat captain respects that. But for him, he needs to be closer to someone to truly care for them—and he’s been looking for that connection for a while now. “One person to care about in this world—that’s enough for me.” Which is also a nice sentiment.

All that caring leads all of them (MacGregor, too) to take risks for each other—even to the point of making the ultimate sacrifice.

In flashback, we also see an indigenous group show great kindness to a handful of conquistadors. And we learn that at least one of those conquistadors sought out the Tears for a pretty good reason of his own.

Spiritual Elements

The Tears themselves were a gift from the gods, it’s suggested, and Frank named his boat after the goddess of the moon (Quilla, an actual Incan deity). The history of the tears is filled with magical happenings and elements, too, including a very effective curse. Part of that curse involves an element of undead immortality. Apart from that, though, there is little apparent hope of an afterlife, but rather eternal rest.

Lily spies some Brazilian dolphins. Frank cautions her to not look them in the eyes: Those dolphins, he says—repeating a real Brazilian legend—are said to be shapeshifters who might just steal you away. “If you believe in legends,” he cautions, “you should believe in curses, too.” Indigenous tribespeople don masks made out of skulls, and the leader has painted an eye on her hand—suggesting an adherence to some sort of mysterious religion.

There’s a reference to the Garden of Eden. It’s said that Lily wants to be the “Darwin of flowers,” a reference to the naturalist who popularized the notion of evolution.

Sexual Content

Before diving into water, Lily strips down to her modest 1916-era skivvies. (“Are you wearing pants under your pants?” Frank asks.) We also see some indiginous folks go shirtless or (in the case of women) shoulder-baring garb. Life-saving, underwater swaps of oxygen resemble a pair of lip-to-lip kisses. Some banter over treating a wound—with Frank asking Lily if it’s her “first time”—is filled with possible light double entendres.

MacGregor, Lily’s brother, is apparently gay. He tells Frank that he had to break the truth to a would-be female match that his “interests lie elsewhere,” and that he would’ve been disinherited and completely ostracized from society for “who I loved,” had it not been for Lily. This is the only reference to MacGregor’s sexual leanings, and it could sail over some younger viewers’ heads. Yet, the context of the conversation might make it more likely that those younger viewers will ask questions later.

Violent Content

The movie opens in earnest in London, where a villain quickly and cartoonishly dispatches a number of bearded scientists. We see no blood, but given the blades involved, there’s no doubt as to the fates of these unfortunates. Someone nearly tumbles to her death during the melee, as well, but instead lands safely on a double-decker bus.

But if London’s a dangerous place, it doesn’t hold a candle to the Amazon. We see creatures nab other creatures, only to get snatched up in turn—the suggestion being that pretty much everything’s subject to being gobbled up and eaten. People are stabbed and shot and nearly drowned, and a couple of unfortunates fall from terrific heights, bouncing off branches and rocks on the way down. Someone is skewered by a pretty nasty blade (we see the end jut out from the other side) but survives—and someone else is forced to pull the blade out. Someone is crushed by a falling rock.

A leopard attacks Frank and bites his wrist. He and the animal wrestle in a bar for a bit (threatened by a nearby tarantula and scorpion, who just minutes before had been locked in an apparent fight-to-the-death). Someone’s foot is seriously injured. A man is thwacked by a golf club. A couple of guys get whacked in their privates (momentarily disabling them). Men burn their hands. People comically run into various hard surfaces, knocking them down or, in one case, plunging from a zip line. People are bitten by snakes, and at least a couple seem to die from the bites. Sunburns look pretty painful. Animals are shot and caught for food. We hear some joking references to beheadings. Piranhas attack Frank.

[ Spoiler Warning ] We should mention those undead conquistadors. They commit plenty of acts of violence, to be sure, but more than that, these guys are just plain scary. Each seems to be cursed as a different jungle avatar: The body of one is alive with slithering snakes, some of which slide out of his skin (which sometimes splits rather grotesquely). Another seems built partly out of honeycombs, with portions of his body missing. If you remember the undead pirates from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, you can get a sense of the level of ookiness we’re talking about here, but something to be aware of.

Crude or Profane Language

Someone uses the German equivalent of the s-word. We hear one “h—” and about three misuses of God’s name. The movie purposefully calls to mind a harsher profanity, though, when a character rejects an invitation to a prestigious educational body—telling its members that they can “shove it up your association.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Frank imbibes quite a bit (most likely a nod to Humphry Bogart’s hard-drinking character in The African Queen). He quaffs liquid from a glass flask he always has with him, and he partakes elsewhere, too (ordering, for instance, “two beers and two steaks”). When MacGregor tries to bring seemingly dozens of trunks along, Frank throws most overboard but pointedly keeps the trunk full of liquor.

Frank’s pet leopard laps up some of the alcohol from one of those bottles (wine or port, most likely) and gets drunk. During a visit with an indigenous tribe, MacGregor seems quite impressed with the alcohol they give him, until he learns …

Other Negative Elements

… that the alcohol in question is, in Frank’s words, “fermented spit.”

Three characters (including the leopard) vomit, either on the boat deck or over the rail. Frank tells Lily that she can take a bath in the Amazon itself—slyly mentioning that he warmed it up for her earlier (that is, urinated in its waters). When Lily gets splashed, Frank looks at her trousers and says, “Looks like you wet your pants, Pants (his nickname for her).”

Lots of characters—including the good guys—lie and steal here. Indeed, the arrowhead that Lily needs to complete its quest is snatched from its apparently rightful owners (an act she would frame as one of “liberation”).

The inspiration for Jungle Cruise isn’t found in ancient legend or turn-of-the-century storybook, but rather a ride—the beloved Jungle Cruise ride found at most Disney parks.

The ride itself is considered a classic. It opened along with the original Disneyland way back in 1955, and countless guests line up to experience its charm—the animatronic animals, the wisecracking captains, the “backside of water”—every year. And while it has undergone its share of revisions (redesigning the boats and stripping the scenery of some uncomfortably racist elements), the ride that 7-year-olds experience today isn’t that much different from the ride their parents might’ve loved decades before. You could argue that the Jungle Cruise, the ride, is timeless.

The movie? Not so much.

Paradoxically, it embraces a few truly timeless films: It definitely exhibits a strong Indiana Jones vibe, and the characters Lily and Frank strongly echo (in word and garb) the characters from one of the ride’s big sources of inspiration: The African Queen .

But this Jungle Cruise —despite being set more than a century ago and paying homage to a ride nearly 70 years old—is a product of our secularly moralistic age. It’s concerned with issues that our society is concerned about, from feminism to the environment to LGBTQ issues.

That’s not all bad, of course. But it does stamp Jungle Cruise with a “best buy” date, because what society values shifts as society itself does. The morals culture embraces today may feel retro and even embarrassing 40 years from now. And even in this age, Jungle Cruise can feel a bit proselytizing.

In addition, the movie has more content issues than you might expect. While its pretty innocuous when it comes to skin and sensuality, Jungle Cruise is surprisingly violent and pretty scary. And I’ve not seen so much drinking in a film designed for families since Bogey and Hepburn sailed up the Congo on the African Queen .

The film boasts some delightfully hideous puns and stars a couple of charismatic Disney vets in Emily Blunt and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. It can be fun. But in many ways, Jungle Cruise sails off course. And for some families, some unexpected rapids loom downstream.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Review: Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt are fun, but not enough to make ‘Jungle Cruise’ see-worthy

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The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health officials .

Starting this Friday, if you’re willing to spend the time (a little more than two hours) and money (either the price of a theater ticket or a $29.99 Disney+ Premier Access fee), you can watch the new “Jungle Cruise” movie, a technologically newfangled, dramatically old-fashioned action-adventure inspired by the long-running Disney theme-park ride. Alternately, in much less time (eight minutes) and for no money at all, you could watch a video recording of said theme-park ride on YouTube.

I don’t mean to suggest that these are equivalent experiences exactly. Personally I prefer the YouTube version, which may have been filmed in a giant Anaheim water tank festooned with imported plants and mechanical elephants, yet still somehow manages to offer up the less artificial, more persuasively inhabited jungle scenery of the two. Enthusiasts of Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt and the color orange, however, will probably want to spring for the longer, shinier, digitally enhanced version, perhaps hoping that, like Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies — the first one , anyway — it will succeed in turning a slow-moving boat ride into an energetic, nostalgia-tickling cinematic diversion.

And to be sure, this “Jungle Cruise,” serviceably directed by Jaume Collet-Serra ( “The Shallows” ), does reproduce some of the ride’s signature pleasures in elaborate computer-generated form: the leafy overgrowth, the exotic wildlife, the gently flowing stream. By that I also mean the stream of puns rattled off by the skipper, who is played by Johnson. That he represents an upgrade over the average Disney park employee — no offense, average Disney park employee — is hard to deny. And whether you’re wordplay-averse or (like me) think the whole enterprise should have been retitled “Pungle Cruise,” the mischievous wit that has always undergirded Johnson’s brawny physicality serves him well in this department. What a dorky, deadpan delight to hear him say things like “toucan play that game” or point out that certain rocks are “taken for granite.” (Certain Rocks too, surely.)

A man in suspenders and a cap, right, looks forward while a man and a woman look at him

Being a full-length feature, of course, “Jungle Cruise” does have to traffic in niceties like plot, character and mythology, even if the result, scripted by Michael Green, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, is derivative to the point of desultory. Johnson is Frank, the wily captain of a rickety Amazon River tourist trap, trying to eke out a semi-honest living amid stiff competition from a local bigwig (Paul Giamatti). Blunt plays Frank’s latest passenger, Lily Houghton, an apt name for a high-minded English botanist who’s trying to find the “Tears of the Moon,” a legendary flower known for its astonishing healing powers. Fate brings these two singularly stubborn individuals together for a long and bickersome journey downriver, pitting Frank’s cynical self-interest against Lily’s naive idealism and pairing Blunt’s reliably withering eye rolls with Johnson’s famously expressive eyebrows.

The chemistry generated by all this ocular sparring is not negligible, and it powers this waterlogged star vehicle through its busy, semicoherent action sequences and squalls of narrative incident. It’s 1916 and World War I is raging, which at least partly explains Jesse Plemons’ over-the-top turn as Prince Joachim, a mustachioed German villain who will butcher any person or vowel that stands in his way. He’s determined to harvest the Tears of the Moon before Lily does, even if it means steering a U-boat down the Amazon in hot pursuit. And hot is the operative word, given the sweltering Brazilian temperatures, hinted at by the oppressive ochre tones of Flavio Labiano’s digital cinematography and the sweat beads you can practically see clinging to Paco Delgado’s costumes.

Speaking of which: Also along for the ride is Lily’s brother, MacGregor (Jack Whitehall), who has dapper tastes, packs way too many suitcases and, as the movie seldom tires of reminding us, is comically ill equipped for any kind of rugged living or heterosexual entanglement. But worry not: Once it’s done poking fun at an effeminate male stereotype, the script swoops in with a cautious coming-out monologue perfectly tailored to generate a fresh round of headlines celebrating and/or criticizing Disney’s latest LGBTQ milestone. This being Disney, of course, we’re quite a long way from, say, the family-unfriendly subversions of “I Love You Phillip Morris,” Ficarra and Requa’s joyous 2010 comedy of queer awakening. Even within these ostensibly punny parameters, the only jungle cruising that goes on here is all too literal.

People in tribal garb dance in a line surrounded by fire torches

Still, MacGregor’s blip of a backstory isn’t the only instance in which this early 20th century epic nods to a decidedly 21st century audience. As my Times colleague Todd Martens recently examined in a thoughtful, deeply reported piece , the Jungle Cruise ride, a Disneyland fixture since the park opened in 1955, recently underwent a significant overhaul that jettisoned its racist depictions of Indigenous people. The movie, through some clever tinkering, accomplishes something similar, turning its gallery of spear-brandishing headhunters into a sly joke at the expense of Western colonialist assumptions. The real villains here are Plemons’ power-hungry prince and his army of undead Spanish conquistadors, one of whom (played by Édgar Ramirez) is none other than Aguirre himself. That historical nod conjures some wishful Herzogian overtones in a movie otherwise conceived under the spell of “The African Queen” (itself a design influence on the original ride), Indiana Jones, “Romancing the Stone” and other films from an earlier era of cinematic adventure seeking.

To watch those films again may be to plunge back into a world of cheap jokes and retrograde attitudes. But it’s also to be reminded of what mainstream American movies looked like before the era of wall-to-wall visual effects, the kind that’ve turned the modern blockbuster into a shiny, increasingly soulless and sometimes flat-out ugly proposition. “Romancing the Stone” had live snakes and snapping alligators and an appreciably real sense of peril; this movie has a digitally fabricated jaguar, among other computer-generated creepy-crawlies, and not a real thrill or scare among them. “Jungle Cruise,” despite its more-than-capable leads and its much-vaunted attention to detail and verisimilitude, never feels transporting in the way that even mediocre blockbusters were once able to muster. It’s less an expedition than a simulation, a dispatch from a wild yet oddly pristine world where seeing is never close to believing.

‘Jungle Cruise’

Rating: PG-13, for sequences of adventure violence Running time: 2 hours, 7 minutes Playing: Starts July 30 in general release; also available as PVOD on Disney+

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‘Jungle Cruise’ Review: Amazon Subprime

Not even Emily Blunt, doing her best Katharine Hepburn impression, can keep this leaky boat ride afloat.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

Like Vogon poetry , the plot of Disney’s “Jungle Cruise” is mostly unintelligible and wants to beat you into submission. Manically directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, this latest derivation of a theme-park ride shoots for the fizzy fun of bygone romantic adventures like “ Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981) . That it misses has less to do with the heroic efforts of its female lead than with the glinting artifice of the entire enterprise.

Emily Blunt plays Lily, a sassy British botanist weary of being disrespected by London’s chauvinistic scientific community. The Great War is in full swing, but Lily is obsessed with reaching the Amazon jungle to search for a flower that’s rumored to cure all ills. A roguish riverboat captain named Frank (Dwayne Johnson) is hired, and soon Lily and her fussy brother (Jack Whitehall) — whose discomfort with all things Amazonian is a running gag — are heading upriver into a host of digital dangers.

As snakes, cannibals and maggoty supernatural beings rattle around the frame, “Jungle Cruise” exhibits a blatantly faux exoticism that feels as flat as the forced frisson between its two leads. The pace is hectic, the dialogue boilerplate (“The natives speak of this place with dread”), the general busyness a desperate dance for our attention. Jesse Plemons is briefly diverting as a nefarious German prince, and Edgar Ramírez pops up as a rotting Spanish conquistador named Aguirre. Werner Herzog must be thrilled.

Buffeted by a relentless score and supported by a small town’s worth of digital artists, “Jungle Cruise” is less directed than whipped to a stiff peak before collapsing into a soggy mess.

“Everything you see wants to kill you,” Frank tells his passengers. Actually, I think it just wants to take your money.

Jungle Cruise Rated PG-13 for chaste kissing and bloodless fighting. Running time 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters and on Disney+ .

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REVIEW! We’re Back at Disney World’s World-Famous Jungle Cruise…Restaurant!

By Quincy Stanford 5 Comments

You’ve heard of the Jungle Cruise, you’ve heard of the backside of water, but have you heard of Jungle Navigation Co. Skipper Canteen !? That’s right! We’re bringing you a review from the punniest and most adventurous restaurant in Magic Kingdom.

Skipper Canteen Spread

We’re headed over to Magic Kingdom’s Adventureland to try out a restaurant we’ll be calling Skipper Canteen for this review (since that full name is SUPER lengthy). This is the only table service restaurant in Adventureland and easily the home of most of the more interesting meals that you can find in Magic Kingdom. We love this restaurant and think it’s a rock-solid addition to Magic Kingdom, yet many guests take it for granite. It’s definitely one of the boulder choices for dining in Disney World’s original park. (We should apologize now: buckle up — it’s gonna be a lot of Jungle Cruise jokes!)

Hello and welcome to the world-famous Jungle Cruise…restaurant. We tend to enjoy visits to Skipper Canteen due to its immersive theme and unique menu. You’d be hard-pressed to find similar eats anywhere else in Disney World! This restaurant is themed around the “World Famous” Jungle Cruise attraction featuring “World Famous Jungle Cuisine” and there are SO many details to see in the theming.

Skipper Canteen

Get ready for a menu of surprising dishes inspired by African, Asian, and Latin cuisine. Plus, we might have a laugh along the way! And now ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…the start of…our review! 😉

The atmosphere at Skipper Canteen is inspired by the Jungle Cruise attraction , so this is a very good spot for those who LOVE the iconic attraction…or puns…puns too. Lots of puns.

The story of the restaurant is that the granddaughter of the Jungle Cruise’s Dr. Albert Falls, Alberta Falls , took over the family business (That’s Jungle Navigation Co. !).

Jungle Navigation Co. was originally a cargo shipping venture before they started offering Jungle Cruises to tourists. Now, Skipper Canteen offers meals for passengers before or after their Jungle Cruise!

Skipper Canteen has three different dining rooms : the Falls Family Parlor is themed as a comfy space for the Falls family and is absolutely loaded with awesome animal details that are playful nods to the attraction (seriously — look up and down especially in here!).

And there’s the once-secret meeting room of the Society of Adventurers and Explorers or S.E.A. .

We were seated in the Crew Mess Hall! This is the first room you enter and the largest of the three. As you can see, most of the seating area contains standard tables and chairs and some booths .

We love sitting in any of the dining rooms but the main room certainly feels lively!

Another fun aspect is that your server will actually be a Jungle Cruise Skipper ! So, in addition to serving up “World Famous Jungle Cuisine,” you’ll probably also get served some JOKES. Truth be told, Skippers can vary wildly here. We’ve had some just NOT breaking character and letting the dad-jokes rip the entire meal (love it!) and other times that the “Skipperiness” is barely detectable. Basically, your mileage may vary with your server.

If you have a moment before or after your meal, we DEFINITELY recommend walking around and taking a look at some of the hidden details and jokes around the restaurant — like that barrel full of the backside of water!

And remember to HAVE FUN! Your host, server, and even food runners might have some fun bits and jokes for you. Plus, it’s a relaxed atmosphere that still has dynamite food offerings.

Speaking of dynamite food offerings, we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. Or afoot of ourselves. (They’re not all winners, folks!)

As we’ve seen at most table service restaurants in Disney World at this time, the menu is available through a QR Code . Paper menus are available upon request.

At our table, we were given a cloth napkin and utensils .

As we’ve said, the Skipper Canteen menu is pretty unique. You’ve got four appetizer options. We’ve had lots of servers recommend the Falls Family Falafel in the past.

Skipper Canteen Menu

As for entrees, the Perkins Thai Noodles are a favorite of ours. For more adventurous eaters there’s the oddly NOT fun-named Sustainable Fish (it IS noted as “not piranha” sooo…). This is one or two (depends on what’s available) WHOLE fried fish. If you don’t mind picking through a lot of bones, this is quite good. We’re going to try something a little different today though! You’ll have to keep reading to find out what!

And here’s a glance at desserts. If you didn’t pick up on it from looking at the menu, you should definitely keep an eye out for jokes here as well! The whole menu is loaded with them!

Even the kids’ meal options are more on the adventurous side!

Skipper Canteen has a variety of beverage options including a few signature cocktails. The Schweitzer Slush is great for kids (created by famed explorer Dr. Albert…Slush!). They USED to have some really great souvenir cups here that the two specialty beverages were served in. We haven’t seen these offered for a while now.

And, being a table service restaurant in Magic Kingdom , there is a selection of beer and wine. You can also find those great sangrias here still!

Today, we opted to try the Jungle Navigation Co. Shandy cocktail for $10 . This drink is an interesting mix of Blue Moon Belgium White Ale and Simply Lemonade .

Jungle Navigation Co. Shandy

This was nice and refreshing! There were some citrus hints but they weren’t overwhelming. Overall, it was a very enjoyable twist on a shandy but not as sweet as one made with Sprite. If you enjoy citrus beers, this is a fun drink to try that goes down easy! Well- you know what they say…safari, so good-ee. So I guess we’ll be moving on to our meal!

Our first appetizer was the Jungle Green Salad for $10 . Be warned, this salad comes right from the depths of the jungle! At least, that’s what the menu says anyway.

Jungle Green Salad

This salad is made with Skipper Bill’s Iceberg Wedge with Shishito Peppers, Radish, Hearts of Palm, Cucumbers, and Pistachios with an Ají Pepper-Yogurt Dressing .

The hearts of palm were nice and salty and added a great tanginess to the salad. The shishito had a little bit of a kick, but nothing too crazy. If you’re totally spice averse, you might not like them but we did!

The dressing was a little spicy as well but there wasn’t very much of it so the vegetables and lettuce helped to cool the heat. We liked the kick in the dressing but weren’t the biggest fans of the yogurt flavors. Note that this salad does have nuts!

Our other appetizer was the ever-recommended Falls Family Falafel for $10 .

Falls Family Falafel

This is a “secret recipe” of Chickpeas, Garlic, Onions, Lemon Juice, and Herbs served with House-made Edamame Hummus and Toasted Pumpkin Seeds .

For a plant-based dish, this was FULL of flavor and so, so tasty! It wasn’t too spicy and we loved the crunch from the pumpkin seeds. Plus, it was filling! This option could easily be a light entree for someone or great for sharing.

The falafel was flavorful and honestly, kind of reminded us of hushpuppies. We could mostly taste the onion and the lemon. Our reporter is a big garlic fan and her only wish was for MORE GARLIC.

Both of the appetizers were great portion sizes. We will say that for most appetizer options (and the rest of the menu, TBH), you need to be comfy with adventurous flavors. They are very fun and bold! We think plant-based eaters will especially appreciate these options. Too often Disney’s plant-based options seem a bit like they were trying too hard to cram a plant-based anything on the menu. But this is something plant and meat-eaters alike would genuinely enjoy — we did!

Alright, on to the entrees! First up, we’ve got the “Hardy Har Char” Siu Pork for $25 .

“Hardy Har Char” Siu Pork

This dish is Char Siu-marinated Pork served with Seasonal Vegetables and Jasmine Rice and it was HUGE.

This one wasn’t spicy as it had more of a sweet barbecue-like sauce. Think more like a VERY red sweet and sour sauce. The serving was four BIG pieces of pork, a big ol’ pile of jasmine rice, and those seasonal veggies. We had bok choy which was lightly seasoned and a nice addition to the dish. In the past we’ve had broccolini with this dish as well.

The rice was cooked perfectly and the bok choy was simply done so that you could really taste its natural flavors. Grab a bite of pork with the rice and you’re set with some awesome flavors. The pork is mega flavorful and well-seasoned. Would now be a good time to mention that Skipper Canteen is sponsored in part by the hippo farmers of America? Hippo: The other-other white meat.

We would also note that the pork might be the safest bet on the menu for picky eaters. The sauce is sweet and nothing is overly seasoned so it may be better for pickier palettes.

Aaaand our other option was the Curried Vegetable Crew Stew for $19 . According to the menu, it’s “a favorite of the Crew Stew Crew (especially Stu).”

Curried Vegetable Crew Stew

Expect bites of Seasonal Vegetables and Pineapple Tofu in a House-made Curry Sauce served with Coconut Rice . And, yep, it’s a plant-based dish!

There was a little kick to the curry, but it wasn’t overwhelming. We spotted cauliflower, carrots, haricot verts, red bell pepper, and pineapple chunks as our seasonal vegetables and they were super flavorful and delicious.

The coconut sticky rice was OUT OF THIS WORLD. We loved the slight coconut flavor and it almost had a creamy texture with a nuttiness that was amazing. The green onions were a nice touch too. We could’ve just eaten a big ol’ bowl of this rice. We want the recipe!!!

The tofu was lightly fried and had a fun pineapple flavor that we enjoyed and the Methi bread was awesome. We could eat that bread all day long. If you’re looking for a fun and unique dish, try the stew! We would definitely order it again. Again, another thoughtfully-crafted plant-based dish. Score another one for Skipper Canteen!

For dessert, we had Panna-Connie’s Congo Lime Delight for $9 .

Panna-Connie’s Congo Lime Delight

This unique treat is a Lime “Panna Cotta” served with Mango-Lime Sorbet and Fresh Fruit . And it’s the finale of what turned out to be our almost entirely plant-based meal (minus the pork 😉).

The sorbet was delicious. It was sweet and tart with little candied lime zest on top. The panna cotta was VERY tart, almost to the point that it needed more sugar. It didn’t have the sweetness we were looking for to balance the sour.

The lime flavor mostly came through in the aftertaste and it was pretty fresh and cool — it just could’ve been a little sweeter! The sugar crumble was yummy so we would’ve loved more of that too. If you really love citrus this will hit the spot, but you might want something sweeter for dessert too. Panna cotta fans will enjoy this, especially if they don’t mind a little tart. It was a good portion so it could be easily shared!

And now, probably the most dangerous part of our journey- the return to civilization! I certainly hope you’ve enjoyed our cruise, err, meal. Make sure you have all personal belongings with you… cameras, purses, small children… anything left on board will be thrown screaming to the elephants. 😉

Nosh or Not

You SHOULD eat at Jungle Navigation Co. Ltd. Skipper Canteen if…

You are looking for a fun atmosphere or LOVE the Jungle Cruise. The theming at this spot is absolutely amazing and fans of the Jungle Cruise or a more immersive dining experience will probably have a blast!
You enjoy more adventurous flavors and dishes. Magic Kingdom is not known for its revolutionary or adventurous options in general, but Skipper Canteen has some of the more unique plates in Disney World.
You’re a plant-based eater (or don’t mind skipping the meat). Skipper Canteen has a very wide variety of actually QUITE good plant-based options compared to most Disney World restaurants.

You should SKIP Jungle Navigation Co. Ltd. Skipper Canteen if…

You don’t have a lot of time. Skipper Canteen can be a longer dining experience so if you only have one day in Magic Kingdom, you may want to skip it. Head to a quick service location instead!
You have picky eaters in your group. Skipper Canteen is not a very easy spot to take picky eaters. The options are mostly unique and very flavorful!
You want to eat outside. Skipper Canteen does have very neat dining spaces — but they’re all indoors!

We absolutely love dining at Skipper Canteen. The food is adventurous and tasty, the service is playful, and we can’t help but LOVE every single Jungle Cruise-inspired detail. Whether you’re looking for a great bite or a great belly laugh, you’ll leave Skipper Canteen smiling and happy.

We’re not sure we’ve ever had a bad meal here and the atmosphere is so light and carefree. There is a lot to look at all around the restaurant and the unique food makes for a super fun dining experience. You might walk right past this Adventureland joint but you really shouldn’t! Sure, skip Skipper Canteen if you have a busy day or a party full of picky eaters; but if you have time to sit and don’t mind more adventurous flavors, you should consider making this reservation a part of your plans!

Overall, we love this place. The atmosphere and the food are amazing and the Cast Members are so hilarious and kind. We’ve never felt rushed here and a Skipper Canteen meal is very relaxing. Do note, the prices are on the high side for some items (but also, they’re not TOO bad by Disney standards!), but you could split a few dishes and still get to enjoy the awesome vibes.

We’ll certainly be back at Skipper Canteen and you know we make a habit of visiting all the other restaurants in Disney World too! Well folks, we’ve laughed. We’ve cried. We’ve almost died! I love you like family. Now go away. I’m sorry, that was rude. Please go away. 😉

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June 3, 2021 at 1:37 pm

I LOVE this restaurant!! I’m a very picky eater and you’re right, the pork is the perfect option. It’s simple but very flavorful without being spicy. And if you love chocolate, I highly recommend the Kungaloosh! for dessert, it’s truly amazing!

June 3, 2021 at 5:07 pm

Sounds interesting, but also sounds like it is an hour plus dining adventure. Don’t know if I could allocate that much time to dining when it is so expensive just to get into the park.

June 3, 2021 at 8:28 pm

It’s always a good idea to ask about secret menu items – currently, it’s cheese bread balls served with a pesto cream sauce. Soooo good!

June 4, 2021 at 8:39 am

yep, this is a great place to eat, found it a few years back when every other table service was booked, I travel in a scooter and the staff was very helpful. THE FOOD was GREAT

July 13, 2021 at 11:04 pm

The food is so good!!! I was there last week with my family and they loved it too!!!

Greetings from Texas!!!

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Disneyland Is Politely Tying To Crack Down On An Annoying Trend, And It's About Time

Disneyland may upset some guests by making others much happier.

Disney Parks are an incredibly popular place to go, but unfortunately, not all of us can visit them whenever we wish. For those of us who might need a quick infusion of pixie dust to feel like we’re in the parks, livestreaming from Disneyland and Walt Disney World has become a popular pastime and even a potential business for some on YouTube and other platforms. However, it looks like the happiest place on Earth may be trying to crack down on the process, though at least they’re being nice about it.

A Disneyland fan recently posted on the r/Disneyland subreddit , that after doing a live stream from the World Famous Jungle Cruise , they were quietly presented with a note that asked them to please stop streaming from the attraction, in the most Jungle Cruise way possible.

I Was handed this as I got off the Jungle Cruise by one of the Skippers from r/Disneyland

While this seems to be a unique situation, we’re not hearing about widespread reactions to livestreamers this way. It certainly looks like Disneyland is taking steps to deal with the practice, which most of the time isn’t an issue, but it can be incredibly annoying when it’s done in a way that bothers everybody else.

Many of the best Disneyland attractions put parties in their own ride vehicles, and they are full of music and dialogue of their own, so a livestreamer wouldn’t be too distracting for other riders. Something like the Jungle Cruise is a bit different since a group of guests ride together, and the narration and Skipper's bad jokes are the main focal point. Although the OP says they weren’t speaking while streaming, so it’s unclear what caused this reaction.

Whatever happened, I don’t hate it. Livestreaming has become incredibly popular in theme parks. Theme Park YouTube is an industry in itself, and many make their living presenting content inside the parks. Most of the time it’s no big deal, but it can be incredibly frustrating when your own park experience is upset by somebody who is narrating the experience in your ear or getting in the way of your view of a parade to get the “perfect shot.” It's also resulted in people getting banned from Disney World , as one TikTok star was trespassed after posting videos in the park in places he should not have been.

Disney World recently cracked down on third-party tour guides , banning many of them from the parks because Disney Parks’ rules prevent guests from making money inside the parks. There’s an argument to be made that many livestreamers are doing the same thing. The videos they are producing are being monetized, and for many of the most successful, this has become their actual job.

There’s an argument that many of the livestreamers promote Disney Parks with their content, and that may be true to a degree. But if it causes a problem for the guests who have already paid money, it’s probably not worth it. We'll be keeping an eye on this to see if it continues.

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CinemaBlend’s resident theme park junkie and amateur Disney historian, Dirk began writing for CinemaBlend as a freelancer in 2015 before joining the site full-time in 2018. He has previously held positions as a Staff Writer and Games Editor, but has more recently transformed his true passion into his job as the head of the site's Theme Park section. He has previously done freelance work for various gaming and technology sites. Prior to starting his second career as a writer he worked for 12 years in sales for various companies within the consumer electronics industry. He has a degree in political science from the University of California, Davis. Is an armchair Imagineer, Epcot Stan, Future Club 33 Member.

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We’re getting closer and closer to the Disney Treasure setting sail!

It will be leaving on its maiden voyage this December, and there are so many reasons to be excited about your time on it! To that point, we wanted to talk about a couple of the reasons why the Disney Treasure will be a MUST-DO for Disney Adults!

Taking into account everything we know about the Disney Treasure so far, we’ve narrowed it down to a list of seven things that Disney Adults will absolutely be on board to experience!

Haunted Mansion Parlor

If you’re a big Haunted Mansion fan like us, you’re already beyond stoked for the Haunted Mansion Parlor coming to the Disney Treasure.

This is going to be a lounge where you’ll be able to have drinks and some eats, all the while being immersed in the spooky vibes. You just might end up spending hours here.

Check out everything we know about the Haunted Mansion Parlor here!

The skipper society.

All you Jungle Cruise Skippers, this one’s for you! The Skipper Society will be the perfect spot for you on board.

There look to be so many hidden details based on the various iterations of the Jungle Cruise attraction from Disney destinations around the world we can already see from the concept art of this bar. You’re going to nerd out when you get in there (and we will, too!).

Let us share all those hidden details with you here!

Periscope pub.

Have you ever heard of the classic movie “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea”? It used to have a popular ride in Magic Kingdom, and Disneyland’s version has been re-themed. Since then, there hasn’t been much in the way of representation for the movie in any of Disney’s offerings. However, that’s about to change thanks to the Disney Treasure!

At the Periscope Pub, you’ll find a selection of craft brews and tasty snacks to enjoy while you watch your favorite sports games on TV. Plus, you might notice a few fun decorations that pay tribute to a famous giant squid.

Check out more about Periscope Pub here!

On the upper deck, adults can enjoy the secluded Quiet Cove aboard the Treasure, which is “dedicated to lounging, sipping and soaking.”

This adults-only area will feature an infinity pool, poolside bar, and cafe. Say less and sign us up!

The Rose is a lounge offering “an upscale suite of epicurean excellence” to enjoy a pre-dinner aperitif or after-dinner cocktail. You’ll find it outside the entrance to Palo Steakhouse and Enchanté.

What other than the rose with falling petals reminds the Beast of his potential fate to serve as the inspiration for this space?

Palo Steakhouse

The Disney Cruise Line’s staple Palo Steakhouse also has a home on the Treasure. It will present its signature combination of “authentic Italian dining with the classic refinement of a modern steakhouse.”

On the Treasure, as with the Wish, the setting will draw inspiration from Cogsworth.

Enchanté (featuring a menu by three-Michelin-starred Chef Arnaud Lallement) will offer the most luxurious dining experience on the ship in a romantic, intimate setting.

The Candelabra, Lumiere, serves as the inspiration for the space.

Last up, I know we said seven, but here’s one more for ya!

Disney hasn’t said much about this space, but we do know that it will be a central hub for both daytime activities and adult-exclusive entertainment in the evenings.

What we can tell is that it’s themed after The Pride Lands in The Lion King !

Disney Cruise Line Ships: Disney Treasure – Everything You Need to Know

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IMAGES

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Jungle Cruise
63% 347 Reviews Tomatometer 92% 5,000+ Verified Ratings Audience Score Join fan favorites Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt for the adventure of a lifetime on Disney's JUNGLE CRUISE, a rollicking ...
Jungle Cruise movie review & film summary (2021)
Reviews Jungle Cruise Matt Zoller Seitz July 30, 2021. ... Wolff's day job is taking tourists upriver and making cheesy jokes in the spirit of "hosts" on Disney Jungle Cruise rides of yore. On the mission, Johnson immediately settles into a cranky but funny old sourpuss vibe, ...
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Through that lens, "Jungle Cruise" delivers about as ably as it possibly could, creating a light-hearted adventure that owes as much to "The Mummy" as anything in Disney's fleet.
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Disney's Jungle Cruise Review. 8. Review scoring. great. Jungle Cruise is a rollicking adventure full of humor and heart anchored by Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt's winning heroes.
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Jungle Cruise is a hodgepodge of old tropes with the same goofy charm as the theme-park attraction it's based on. Emily Blunt is Dr. Lily Houghton, a botanist who seeks a magical tree, while ...
Jungle Cruise (2021)
Jungle Cruise: Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. With Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Edgar Ramírez, Jack Whitehall. Based on Disneyland's theme park ride where a small riverboat takes a group of travelers through a jungle filled with dangerous animals and reptiles but with a supernatural element.
Jungle Cruise
Inspired by the famous Disneyland theme park ride, Disney's Jungle Cruise is an adventure-filled, rollicking thrill-ride down the Amazon with wisecracking skipper Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson) and intrepid researcher Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt). Lily travels from London, England to the Amazon jungle and enlists Frank's questionable services to guide her downriver on La Quila—his ...
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Jungle Cruise (2021)
7/10. Jungle Cruise was pretty enjoyable for what it was. tavm 13 August 2021. Partly inspired by Raiders of the Lost Ark and The African Queen as well as the Disney Parks' famous ride this movie is named after, Jungle Cruise is way too much exposition though things are kept hopping during most of its running time.
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A short six months into his tenure, a film based on the visitor-favourite Disneyland attraction, Jungle Cruise was given the green light. Chapek, now Disney's CEO can finally see the fruition of his grand plan to unify the Production and Experiences arms of the near monopolistic corporation… and it stinks.
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T he Jungle Cruise theme-park ride is a riverboat trip that Disneyland visitors have been queuing up for since the 1950s: an old-timey craft travelling down an artificial jungle river, with a ...
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Parents need to know that Jungle Cruise is an action-fantasy adventure inspired by the classic Disneyland ride. Set in 1916, it follows intrepid Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt), who hires skipper Frank Wolff (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) to guide her and her brother down the Amazon River in search of a mythical healing tree.Violence and peril are the biggest issues: Expect frequent danger ...
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Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt in Jungle Cruise. Photograph: Frank Masi/© 2020 Disney Enterprises, Inc
Jungle Cruise
A couple of guys get whacked in their privates (momentarily disabling them). Men burn their hands. People comically run into various hard surfaces, knocking them down or, in one case, plunging from a zip line. People are bitten by snakes, and at least a couple seem to die from the bites. Sunburns look pretty painful.
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Jack Whitehall, Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson in the movie "Jungle Cruise.". Being a full-length feature, of course, "Jungle Cruise" does have to traffic in niceties like plot, character ...
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Jungle Cruise is a 2021 American fantasy adventure film directed by Jaume Collet-Serra from a screenplay written by Glenn Ficarra, John Requa, and Michael Green.It is based on Walt Disney's eponymous theme park attraction.Produced by Walt Disney Pictures, the film stars Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Édgar Ramírez, Jack Whitehall, Jesse Plemons, and Paul Giamatti.
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Like Vogon poetry, the plot of Disney's "Jungle Cruise" is mostly unintelligible and wants to beat you into submission.Manically directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, this latest derivation of a ...
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We love this restaurant and think it's a rock-solid addition to Magic Kingdom, yet many guests take it for granite. It's definitely one of the boulder choices for dining in Disney World's original park. (We should apologize now: buckle up — it's gonna be a lot of Jungle Cruise jokes!) Hello and welcome to the world-famous Jungle ...
JUNGLE CRUISE
733 reviews and 2218 photos of JUNGLE CRUISE "This place is beautiful. It is situated right after Aloha Isle (where you get the Dole Whips) in Adventureland at Magic Kingdom. We tried a bit of everything. I ordered the Char Siu Pork, which is marinated pork tenderloins on rice with Chinese Broccoli on the side. It was excellent. The flavor was a bit different, but I expected exotic flavors ...
Disneyland Is Politely Tying To Crack Down On An Annoying ...
Something like the Jungle Cruise is a bit different since a group of guests ride together, and the narration and Skipper's bad jokes are the main focal point. Although the OP says they weren't ...
7 Reasons Why the Disney Treasure Will be a MUST-DO for Disney Adults
All you Jungle Cruise Skippers, this one's for you! The Skipper Society will be the perfect spot for you on board. Skipper Lounge ©Disney. There look to be so many hidden details based on the various iterations of the Jungle Cruise attraction from Disney destinations around the world we can already see from the concept art of this bar.

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Reviewed at AMC Lincoln Square, New York, July 26, 2021. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 127 MIN.

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