To me this was great entertainment. A really nice rollercoaster of adventure with healthy dose of humour and fantasy.
Dwayne Johnson is indeed one of my favourite actors these days and he makes a good performance as the somewhat crazy riverboat captain which is (a lot) more than he seems.
This movie is meant to entertain and nothing else. I am quite happy that, despite it being a new Disney production, there’s really not much in terms of woke bullshit preaching in there. A little bit rubbish, especially at the end, but it’s bearable. Maybe Disney has learned the lesson as to how much that crap actually hits the bottom line.
The movie is really a non-stop (almost) rollercoaster of action a ‘la Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider but with a more humorous slant to it. Some people complain about God knows what from the music score to the jokes to the camera movement to whatever. It’s a movie that are just supposed to entertain from start to finish without having to be deep, realistic or delivering some sort of message and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Rather the inverse actually. It was great to just disconnect and watch the adventure and action.
As I said, Dwayne Johnson did his role nicely as the riverboat Captain, Frank Wolff, but most of the rest of the main characters was quite okay. Sure, Frank’s jokes were cringeworthy but then, they were meant to be. MacGregor Houghton was at times a bit annoying but at times quite hilarious. I quite liked when Frank threw his ridiculously large luggage overboard although it was of course quite predictable.
The weakest character was probably Prince Joachim who was mostly silly. He wasn’t far out enough to be a really noteworthy crazy psychopath but not “normal” enough to be taken seriously.
If I should complain about anything it would be that the manoeuvres that wreck of Frank’s performed was, well, not very realistic although it was not as bad as that “handbrake turn” the idiot script writer wrote into Battleship. That one pretty much ruined the movie. Then, there’s also no way the Amazon river is deep enough for a bloody submarine.
I watched this movie with my kids and girlfriend and we all had a really good time watching it.