"F9" and "Jungle Cruise"

Minor spoilers ahead.

I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm not a fan of the "Fast and Furious" franchise, though I've seen every entry in this series since the fifth.  While I've gotten to know the characters and admire many of the performances, I don't have any investment in where this series is going.  The films are far too haphazard, and the storytelling is far too silly for me to do any more than admire their excesses.  I was glad that Justin Lin was coming  back to direct this installment, and that John Cena was coming onboard to play the villain, but my expectations weren't high.  However, "F9" is on track to be one of the biggest blockbuster films of the year, and since it's one of the only major films that is getting an exclusive theatrical release I felt obligated to give it some attention.   

So here we are again, following Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew of fellow car enthusiasts turned super spies, as they go up against Dom's estranged younger brother Jakob (Cena), who is of course a mercenary assassin and terrific driver - but somehow not allowed to do anything interesting onscreen.  This installment spends a lot of time on flashbacks to Dom's troubled youth, and checking in with a ton of minor characters that the franchise has accumulated over the years, everyone from Kurt Russel's Mr. Nobody to Nathalie Emmanuel as hacker Ramsey.  A few of the bigger name stars and the more obscure ones show up, but it wouldn't be fair to reveal which ones.  The absurdity of the action scenes, including cars jumping impossible chasms, cars being sent flying by giant magnets, and cars being launched into the atmosphere, has been ramped up to infinity and beyond.  The plot really feels like it's beside the point.

On the other hand, there's a sloppiness to the characters constantly switching sides and faking their deaths that is starting to get very long in the tooth.  Secondary characters Roman (Tyrese Gibson) and Tej (Ludacris) get a lot of mileage (ahem) out of meta commentary on how ridiculous their lives have become, and how they really should all be dead by now.  This is a lot of fun, but drawing attention to the series' flaws may not be the best tactic here.  While "Fast and Furious" hasn't run out of gas for me yet, it's getting steadily more difficult to forgive all the little moments where we have to put aside basic logic and internal continuity for a cool moment.  And Vin Diesel's Dom keeps getting less and less interesting and charismatic with each installment.  I've been quietly hoping for him to pass the torch to one of his co-stars - any of his co-stars - for a while now.      

A notable actor who doesn't show up in "F9" is Dwayne Johnson, who is starring in Disney's "Jungle Cruise" with Emily Blunt.  I don't think anyone is going to be surprised that this is essentially a "Pirates of the Caribbean" revamp, with Johnson playing an affable steamboat captain named Frank, who makes a living ferrying tourists around the Amazon in the 1910s.  Blunt plays Dr. Lily Houghton, a botanist intent on finding a magical cure-all called the Tears of the Moon, which was apparently found by the conquistador Don Lope de Aguirre (Edgar Ramirez) before he disappeared into the jungle in the sixteenth century.  Jack Whitehall is also along for the trip, playing Lily's foppish brother MacGregor, while Jesse Plemmons, Paul Giamatti, and a lot of CGI critters are on hand for villainy.     

"Jungle Cruise" is exactly the kind of movie you'd expect it would be, a family friendly action-adventure comedy with a lot of banter and a lot of slapstick.  Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt are very good separately, but not so much together, which is a shame.  They're set up to be a screwball comedy couple, but don't quite have the chemistry to pull it off.  The movie hums along in happy mediocrity, occasionally redeemed by a good moment like Plemmons hamming it up mightily as a German noble, or Johnson making nice with a cuddly CGI jaguar.  As someone who is perhaps a little too familiar with the Disneyland Jungle Cruise ride, I appreciated that there were some callbacks, but I also appreciated that they were dispensed with very quickly.       

The film is directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who made his name in much lower budget horror and action films.  It's likely thanks to him that there's so much nightmare imagery and visceral body horror that you wouldn't expect in a film like this.  However, the execution is tripped up by some oddly underwhelming CGI and effects work that looks unfinished in many shots.  However, the machinery of the film's roller coaster ride narrative is well oiled, and avoids ever feeling slow or tedious.  The writing is just clever enough to spring a few surprises and keep your attention, but trots out all the old cliches exactly when you know it will.  

---