2021 thriller/mystery, dir. Jaume Colette-Sara, Dwayne Johnson, Emily
Blunt; IMDb /
allmovie. In
1916, Dr Lily Houghton travels up the Amazon in search of a tree that
could revolutionise medicine…
Yes, this is indeed based on the Disneyland ride: planning for
the film started in 2004 when Pirates of the Caribbean had just made
All the Money. (Even though The Haunted Mansion… didn't.) It burbled
around looking uninspired for a while, then Mr The Rock joined the
project in 2015 and things started moving. As one might expect given
the amount of corporate money behind it, there's nothing particularly
inspired here, just entertainment.
So Frank is a wisecracking ne'er-do-well and Lily is Marion Ravenwood
minus the implied underage sex plus a dab of Amelia Earhart; the tree
is a hybrid of banyan, baobab, other big trees; there are panthers and
blowdarts and native tribes as written by someone who's desperate not
to let them be seen as in any way bad guys (those are the Evil German
and his mercenaries, plus some others I won't talk about). There's
lots and lots and lots of CGI, much of it quite obvious. So far so
straightforward.
But as entertainment it works. Yes, it's all a bit connect-the-dots in
the primary plot, but that serves as a framework against which Johnson
and Blunt can be funny. (And do the obligatory vomit joke to keep the
kiddies awake.) Johnson of course can do this effortlessly; Blunt has
to work a bit harder, but carries it off well. Gradual revelations
about Frank in particular, and about the locals, bring in unexpected
layers of complexity. There's a blend of action and character which a
lot of action films no longer bother with. Unusually for Disney, it's
not quite inoffensive enough to become bland.
A film for the ages? Probably not. Two stars who know what they're
doing, doing it really well, plus lots and lots of expensive pixels?
Sure.
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