Eavesdropping At The Movies

Disney has already turned one of its theme park rides into a box office colossus - is it time for another? They seem to think so, bringing us Jungle Cruise, an adaptation of one of the attractions from Disneyland's grand opening in 1955, the Jungle River Cruise, starring The Rock, who we still refuse to call Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, and Jack Whitehall, as explorers searching for the Tree of Life. The film gives the ride more than a nod and a wink, The Rock's character operating a cruise along the Brazilian Amazon, complete with the real ride's cheesy dad jokes - and there's effort made to reckon with the attraction's history of racist representation of indigenous peoples. How successfully it does so is up for debate, the film indulging in its own cultural imperialism - despite being set in Brazil, there isn't a word of Portuguese spoken; and no matter the purity of their intention, the characters are still in Brazil to take something that doesn't belong to them. We also discuss the film's feminism and s