Jungle Cruise (2021)

For every Pirates of the Caribbean, there is also a Country Bears or The Haunted Mansion. This fits somewhere in between those two extremes. Dwayne Johnson portrays his usual character, an amiable, wisecracking something or other (here an Amazon riverboat captain, similar to those who pilot the Disneyland ride). He’s hired by Emily Blunt to take his boat to search for a mythical tree with magical flowers. The two of them have a stupidly negative amount of chemistry between them. Portraying German Prince Joachim, Jesse Plemons squanders almost every opportunity to ham it up as a villain. Sadly Paul Giamatti would likely have done an incredible job in the role, but is relegated to a lesser antagonist. Though quite heavy on the CGI, the settings are colorful and appealing, but that doesn’t offer enough to explain why a sequel is being made.