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Humphrey Bogart's son addresses the clear parallels between The African Queen and Jungle Cruise

Plus, Stephen Bogart talks the 70th-anniversary big screen return of his father's Oscar-winning film.

Maureen Lee Lenker is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly with over seven years of experience in the entertainment industry. An award-winning journalist, she's written for Turner Classic Movies, Ms. Magazine , The Hollywood Reporter , and more. She's worked at EW for six years covering film, TV, theater, music, and books. The author of EW's quarterly romance review column, "Hot Stuff," Maureen holds Master's degrees from both the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford. Her debut novel, It Happened One Fight , is now available. Follow her for all things related to classic Hollywood, musicals, the romance genre, and Bruce Springsteen.

The African Queen is returning to the big screen — in more ways than one.

The classic John Huston film is celebrating its 70th anniversary, and to honor its platinum year, TCM is bringing it back to theaters as part of its Big Screen Classics series with Fathom Events this July.

But in some ways, it's returning in an even more subtle way when Jungle Cruise hits theaters July 30. The original Disneyland ride which inspired the new film took heavy inspiration from the Humphrey Bogart classic, down to the design of the boat. And that continues across to Jungle Cruise, in everything from the costumes Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson wear to the concept of a jungle-river-set adventure.

Stephen Bogart, the only son of the African Queen star and his glamorous other half, Lauren Bacall , doesn't find anything particularly touching about the homage, however. "The Rock is fine," he tells EW. "He's got a great personality. He seems like a very good person. I think he works hard; he cares about it, and I'll go see the movie. It'll be fun. But I never thought of it as a continuation, nor do I think Dwayne Johnson is trying to be Humphrey Bogart, that'd be tough."

"I don't want to disparage [anyone]," he adds when pressed about how the films might stack up next to each other. "But 70 years later, they probably won't be doing a re-release of Jungle Cruise ."

The African Queen remains a stone-cold classic, often cited on lists of the greatest films of all time. It paired screen legends Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn for their only collaboration and won Bogie his sole Oscar. And the making of the film was just as wild and adventurous as the movie itself, shooting on location in Africa, with Bacall along for the ride.

Ahead of the movie's return to theaters July 18 and 21, we talked to Bogart about what the Oscar win meant to his father, what stories he remembers hearing about the chaotic production over the years, and just why Bogie and director John Huston had such a special bond.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: A lot of your parents' work stands the test of time, but why do you think African Queen endures 70 years later?

STEPHEN BOGART: First of all, because it's a great movie. It's interesting; it's well written; it's well-directed; it's well-acted. And you see my father in color for the first time, which I think is important. But I think that the reason that any movie stands the test of time is because it's a great movie. And in order to have a great movie you got to have great writing and you have to have great acting and you have to have great directing, and that's any of the movies that stand the test of time. Any really great movie stands the test of time because it stands alone. And this does too. It's two of the great actors ever.

As part of that, your dad won his Oscar for this. Did you have a sense of what that meant to him? If it was important or meaningful to him in any way?

I think that he probably would not admit it, but it was important. He should have won one before. He did not. I'm almost thinking that he should have won for The Caine Mutiny, close to this, but he was fighting with Brando with On the Waterfront and all that sort of stuff. Finally, they decided to give him an Oscar. And I think it was. If you look at his Oscar speech, it was short.

Most of them were then.

Yes. I think it was important to him to be recognized for his craft. Because he was a great picker of movies. If you could bet on movies, you would want to bet on the movies my father picked to make. Because his filmography is second to none.

Do you think this is the role he most deserved to win for? It sounds like maybe you think it should've been for The Caine Mutiny.

He could've won for any of them. He could've won for Caine Mutiny ; he could've won for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre . He could've won for Casablanca ; he could have won for Desperate Hours .

You were a baby when this movie was being made, but do you remember hearing any stories over the years?

I was 2 years old, so I really don't remember anything. It was just a difficult shoot; it was interesting because you know my father died when I was eight. And so, none of those discussions that you would have with a teenager were really discussed. My father came back; he makes another movie.

Your father and John Huston were an incredible team, including on this film. Why do you think they were so well suited to each other as an actor and director?

They had the same attitude about life. My father recognized the greatness of John Huston and was willing to go to the lengths that John Huston needed to make a movie. He was a great family friend. He gave the eulogy at my father's funeral. I've known Anjelica [Huston] for forever. I just think that my father got John Huston, and my father also was not stupid. He knew when he had hooked onto something that's really good — great writer, great director. And they were going to have fun at those shoots. They were going to work their asses off, but they were going to have fun. That's what's important.

It's pretty well-established that everyone on set got sick during filming, except Huston and your dad. Can you tell me more about that?

They were drinking booze and everybody else was drinking that horrible water. They weren't boiling it, not the way that they would do today. If you look at Naked and Afraid , they wouldn't have that stuff back then, water tablets, and all that. They were just roughing it. It was 1951 in Africa, and nobody knew about that stuff and how careful you had to be. My father and John Huston imbibed the correct way. They didn't get sick.

What do you think was the most trying thing about the shoot — the weather, the water, something else?

It was Africa in 1950. I mean, you can imagine how difficult it would be today. Imagine it then. They were living in tents; they had food they continually brought in from villages. They had to worry about being attacked by animals. It wasn't as if there were a couple of lions in a game preserve. There were lions and piranhas and crocodiles. All this sort of stuff, and it was really wild Africa. And disease. Everything made it so difficult. But that was the adventure too.

Your mom went along for the trip. Do you know why she wanted to go?

Let's see, how would you like to come along with John Huston, Katie Hepburn, and Humphrey Bogart and make a movie in Africa in 1950? Yeah, I'll be doing that. Sure. What are you going to do? Sit at home in L.A. and wait? It's not even a question. Definitely, she went for the adventure. It was an adventurous time, and she was 27 years old.

Do you think facing all of those challenges together brought your parents even closer together?

I doubt it brought them closer together. I mean, they had already worked together, so it wasn't as if being together on a film set was any different. They both thought it was great. It was fun; it was exactly what it should be. And they were pretty darn close anyway.

Do you remember any particular horror stories they told later on?

Well, the fire ants story — my mother, when she walked into the tent, she stepped on it, and there was just a bed of fire ants. And she went running out of the tent. But I never really got any of that. The shoot was just a difficult shoot. People got sick. Food had to be brought in from all over the place. It happened when I was 2 years old and once my father died, my mother didn't really want to talk about that stuff anymore.

What do you think of your dad's chemistry with Katharine Hepburn and how it compares to his many wonderful leading ladies?

He had a chemistry. They were great friends, him and my mother were great friends with Katie and Spencer Tracy. And I remember going over to their house. Katie was my brother Sam's godmother. It was a longtime friendship. My father always admired talent, and Katie was a great, great actress. They were friends forever. They were close.

Do you think them playing off of each other brought anything different or new out in the other?

I'm sure it did. I'm sure when you're playing opposite someone who you respect as an actor, and also someone that you know you can do things that you don't have to work at. Stuff can come across that you don't have to work for, you don't have to push it, it's just there.

I know you only had eight years with him, but which of your father's roles do you think was most like his real-life self and where does this fall on that spectrum?

I don't think that any of his movies are like his real life. He was acting. He was an actor, that's what they do. He was no more a killer than he was in Casablanca and World War II than he was hanging out with Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina , and he certainly wasn't in Mexico looking for gold. That wasn't him. He was acting and that's what so many people don't understand — that he's an actor and he's acting. It's really not like he was in real life.

What is your favorite memory of your father, the one that you feel really defines who he was and what your relationship was with him?

My favorite memory is being on the boat. I don't remember a whole lot. But just being around the boat, being on the Santana. That's the only memory that I have, really.

‘The African Queen’ at 70: How One Jungle Cruise Influenced Another ‘Jungle Cruise’

John Huston's Technicolor adventure was baked into Disney's latest film before they even decided to make it.

On July 17, 1955, Walt Disney experienced what he and many referred to as “Black Sunday.” Imagine, if you will, a swelteringly hot day in southern California surrounded by 28,000 people with limited access to water, atop asphalt soft enough to get your shoes stuck, and things are malfunctioning all around you. On top of that, people everywhere can see the chaos broadcast on their television screens. This was the opening of Disneyland. Obviously, Disney was able to get past that day rather swimmingly, creating an experience that thrills people of all ages to this day. While a great deal of what one could enjoy on that day in July has been removed and replaced over the last 66 years, one attraction that still survives and thrives to this day is the “Jungle Cruise.” Before you could climb aboard a doom buggy to see some happy haunts or ride a bobsled through the Matterhorn mountain, you could enjoy a riverboat cruise through the jungles of Africa, South America, and Asia led by a skipper making jokes so bad you respect how much you groan.

Disney’s original conception of the attraction was to make a living travelogue, a way to combine the sensibilities of the films made about Latin American countries in conjunction with the United States’ Good Neighbor Policy during World War II like Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros with the nature documentary film series True-Life Adventures that had racked up seven Academy Awards by the opening of the attraction. To help crack the idea with a mere one year away from opening, he enlisted the services of artist Harper Goff , who had already been hard at work conceptualizing the Main Street, U.S.A. section of the park, as well as serving as art director for Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea . In an episode of the new series Behind the Attraction on Disney+, Goff says in an archival interview, “I’d seen The African Queen , and I liked it.” The 1951 John Huston adventure film, celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, became the chief inspiration for the timeless attraction, not just in aesthetics but also in simply making it a boat ride, according to Disney Imagineering legend Marty Sklar in the 2008 documentary Disneyland Resort: Imagineering the Magic .

The African Queen , based on the novel by C.S. Forester , stars Katharine Hepburn as British missionary Rose Sayer in East Africa during the early stages of World War I. After the village she lives and preaches in is decimated by German forces, including the murder of her brother ( Robert Morley ), she hitches a dangerous ride down river on the titular steamboat with the unkempt, drunkard skipper Charlie Allnut (an Oscar-winning Humphrey Bogart ) with the hopes of creating a makeshift torpedo to destroy a nearby German ship out for revenge. The two are immediately at odds with each other, as she always has her eyes on the prize while he tries to remain extremely cautious while using humor to pass the time. Despite their differences, they soon fall for each other.

RELATED: Producers John Davis & John Fox on ‘Jungle Cruise,’ Visiting the Secret Disney Vault, and How the Movie Industry Has Changed

The design of the ride vehicles clearly mimic the design of the African Queen boat, a canopied wooden steamship with a big, black boiler to maneuver around plopped in the center. While the African Queen is steered by a tiller in the back, the ships on the Jungle Cruise opt for a steering wheel in the front to better focus on the skipper guiding you. The flagship boat on the attraction is even called the “Congo Queen.” While Bogart’s skipper Allnut may not be throwing out puns a mile a minute, he does find wisecracking or being silly to be popular forms of entertainment. One of the more memorable scenes in the film features the two coming upon a group of hippopotamuses in the river, leading to Allnut charmingly imitating them as they pass by, hence the Jungle Cruise including a scene where your boat comes across its own group of hippos.

Fast forward to 2021, and Disney has released Jungle Cruise , a film based on the eponymous attraction from director Jaume Collet-Serra ( The Shallows ). For a film based on a ride inspired by The African Queen , it only makes sense that the film should draw upon the Oscar-winning film just as much, if not more, than the ride does. Jungle Cruise stars Emily Blunt as British explorer Dr. Lily Houghton in South America during the middle of World War I. After absconding with an arrowhead with directions to a mythic healing tree in the Amazon, she hitches a dangerous ride down river with the mildly unkempt skipper Frank Wolff ( Dwayne Johnson ), who occasionally drinks, with the hopes of finding this tree to cure people around the world. The two are at odds with each other, as she always has her eyes on the prize while he tries to remain extremely cautious while using humor to pass the time. Despite their differences, they soon fall for each other. The African Queen doesn’t feature any undead 16th century jungle monster conquistadors, though.

Johnson’s Frank Wolff character design nearly copies Bogart’s Allnut. Both wear light, striped button down shirts, red kerchiefs around their necks, and, most notably, white caps with black brims. Frank does get a Disney polish compared to Allnut. He is not nearly as wrinkled, disheveled, or dirty, and he certainly doesn’t drink as much, using alcohol consumption as more of an occasional gag than a real problem. Bogart also didn’t have about a thousand pounds of pure muscle on him. Each man has his own reasons for not wanting to endeavor on the more dangerous elements of their respective expeditions, Allnut more for self-preservation instincts and Frank for reasons I don’t want to spoil. The big difference between the two characters is Johnson appropriates the aesthetics of Allnut to disarm you into thinking he isn’t the classical adventure hero (though being the massive and carved Dwayne Johnson somewhat diminishes that effect).

Hepburn’s Rose and Blunt’s Lily, while both being the names of flowers, are far less similar in aesthetics than their male counterparts. Rose dresses more as a proper lady of the period in a skirt and donning a high, frilled collar, whereas Lily dresses in far less traditionally feminine attire like you’d see Katherine Hepburn in a host of other films, earning her the nickname “Pants” from skipper Frank. In personality, the two certainly have much more in common, each with a strong sense of self with a distinct amount of overconfidence. Dr. Lily Houten, being an experienced adventurer herself, justifies that confidence more than Rose, who charges forth with her more outrageous ideas a bit more out of naïve desperation than anything. They also share a heavy amount of skepticism for their skipper companions, unafraid to vocalize that skepticism.

Moments throughout Jungle Cruise certainly echo beyond the character types. A perilous riverboat journey isn’t complete without a scene careening down the rapids. Each film has their own sequence of trying to outrun gunfire from German forces. There are small things like kicking the boat’s steam engine in order to make it work. However, laying out the two films like this almost inevitably does a disservice to Jungle Cruise , making it out to be a Disney ripoff of a beloved Hollywood classic. From the moment Harper Goff mentioned to Walt Disney he thought it would be a good idea to use The African Queen for inspiration for the attraction, a film adaptation of that ride never could be made without seeing the direct lineage. Jungle Cruise draws upon other films too, from Robert Zemckis ’ Romancing the Stone to Disney’s own Pirates of the Caribbean film series. Homage and derivation is nothing new in art. C.S. Forester ’s original The African Queen novel undoubtedly took inspiration from the works of late 19th century adventure writers like Rudyard Kipling ( The Jungle Book ) and Robert Louis Stevenson ( Treasure Island ). It’s up to the audience to determine whether or not those inspirations are rendered in a fresh, exciting way. For an attraction that has run 66 years and still commands often hour-long wait times, the answer is yes. For the film, you can see the film now and judge for yourself.

Jungle Cruise is currently out in the theaters and available for premiere access purchase on Disney+. The African Queen is available to stream on Amazon Prime and the Criterion Channel. An iteration of the Jungle Cruise attraction can be enjoyed at any location where there is a Disney theme park.

KEEP READING: 12 Movies Since 'The Mummy' That Have Tried to Be 'The Mummy'

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The African Queen/Jungle Cruise Comparison

The African Queen is a 1951 adventure film adapted from the 1935 novel of the same name by C. S. Forester. The film was directed by John Huston and produced by Sam Spiegel. The screenplay was adapted primarily by James Agee. It was photographed in Technicolor by Jack Cardiff. The film stars Humphrey Bogart (who won the Academy Award for Best Actor – his only Oscar) and Katherine Hepburn.

Set below includes 8 Still Cards like this one

I just picked up an amazing Commemorative DVD Box Set about the movie:

Senitype representing The African Queen (boat) as filmed in the Technicolor Process

You may recognize the style of boat from the above picture? It should remind you of a famous Disney attraction vehicle!

For Disney fans, the most interesting fact about The African Queen film is that it’s reported to have inspired The Jungle Cruise! Actually, there are said to be two sources of inspiration for the attraction, one being the 1955 True-Life Adventure film entitled “The African Lion,” about a pride of lions, and the film The African Queen . Imagineer Harper Goff referenced the African Queen frequently in his ideas; indeed, it appears his designs of the ride vehicles were inspired by the steamer used in the film.

The small steam-boat used in the film to depict the African Queen was built in 1912, in England, for service in Africa. Let’s compare it to its Theme Park counterpart. First, let’s look at the steering:

In the movie, Ms. Hepburn steers the boat from the rear using a tiller, but in the attraction, the Skipper uses a wheel in the front of the boat:

Uniform color seems the same though

At one time the original boat used as The African Queen in the movie was owned by actor Fess Parker, giving us another Disney tie to the movie. In December 2011, plans were announced to restore the boat. Restoration was completed by the following April and the African Queen is apparently now on display as a tourist attraction at Key Largo, Florida. So if true, this would make an awesome side trip for any Disney fan!

One more cool comparison is found in the 5′ long model used for filming in the movie:

Any scene in the movie where the boat is filmed in a long shot, and in danger, it is actually this 5′ model. And if you like to play with toy boats, you can get your fix just outside The Jungle Cruise in Walt Disney World:

So both The African Queen and The Jungle Cruise have little models of the boats made, but admittedly, WDW’s versions are smaller!

The boat in the movie is called ‘African Queen’, but the boats in the Jungle Cruise attractions have a variety of names. In Disneyland, the queue and station are themed as the headquarters and boathouse of a River Expedition Company, located in a (presumably British) colony of the 1930s. And I believe the names presently in use are:

Amazon Belle
Congo Queen (nudge, nudge)
Hondo Hattie
Irrawaddy Woman
Kissimmee Kate (nudge, nudge a.k.a. Katherine Hepburn?)
Nile Princess
Orinoco Adventuress
Suwannee Lady
Ucayali Una (Wheelchair equipped)
Yangtze Lotus
Zambezi Miss

Names decommissioned in 1997:

Magdalena Maiden
Mekong Maiden

At Walt Disney World, the Jungle Cruise is set up as a depression-era British outpost on the Amazon river, operated by the fictional company, The Jungle Navigation Co., and their boats are named as follows:

Amazon Annie
Bomokandi Bertha (Wheelchair lift equipped)
Congo Connie
Ganges Gertie
Irrawaddy Irma
Mongala Millie
Nile Nellie
Orinoco Ida
Rutshuru Ruby
Sankuru Sadie
Senegal Sal
Ucyali Lolly
Wamba Wanda (Wheelchair lift equipped)
Zambesi Zelda

Retired boat

Kwango Kate (nudge, nudge a.k.a. Katherine Hepburn again?)

Keep in mind these lists are as accurate as I could make them. But now, onto the last bit of Jungle Cruise lore: Is there going to be a live-action movie of the attraction? Let’s read a Disney Press Release:

The Walt Disney Studios is excited to be in development with Mandeville Films and writer Roger S.H. Schulman on a feature film based on the Jungle Cruise, one of the most iconic attractions in Disney theme park history. The film will pair up Tim Allen and Tom Hanks in their first live-action project, after their previous collaborations in the Toy Story trilogy.‬ (Original announcement in 2012, source updated in 2014)

Since this original announcement, talk has died down with no new, er… news. If it does go ahead, it likely will take on a much lighter tone than The African Queen film (set in the first World War) opting instead for comedy, more in line with the Jungle Cruise attraction speils and jokes. And with Tim Allen and Tom Hanks on board (pun intended) that seems logical.

Reproduction of book by Hepburn

This great little reproduction (the size of the DVD box) was included in The African Queen Commemorative Box Set and chronicles Ms. Hepburn’s adventures while filming the movie. In a nutshell: It… was… Hell. Actually filmed in Africa, the cast and crew had to deal with disease, injury, and a total lack of comforts and amenities. Let’s hope that if Disney does go ahead with a Jungle Cruise film, it will go better for all involved!

So what do you think: Are there enough similarities to justify a connection between The African Queen and The Jungle Cruise ?

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About Mike Ellis

Mike has been a Disney fan since his first trip to the Magic Kingdom in 1979 when he was 11 years old. Since that first trip, he has seen parks open, lands close, and attractions come and go, but one thing remains the same, his love for Disney is as strong as ever.

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Reader Interactions

February 24, 2014 at 10:47 am

I loved just walking through my memories of that movie. I will be watching it again soon and thinking Jungle Cruise.

February 24, 2014 at 10:56 am

Glad I could jog a few memories for you, Mary!

February 25, 2014 at 7:36 am

Wonderful article – I learned a couple of things! Note that the “Congo Connie” boat may have been named after Connie De Pinna, the costume designer for “African Queen”, but most likely it’s just a coincidence (or connie-incidence).

February 25, 2014 at 9:56 am

Good to hear from you, Bob! Yeah, I’m sure there could be a quite a few connie-incidences! Like the coffee girl’s name was Zelda, the Key Grip was named Gertie Peterson. I may have the makings for a whole new article!

[…] The Jungle Cruise (for a complete list of boat names, click here) […]

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Is ‘Jungle Cruise’ a Remake of ‘The African Queen’?

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Disney’s Jungle Cruise , which is out on Friday, July 30 in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access, takes its inspiration from the Walt Disney World ride of the same name, which has long been a fixture at the theme park. But the story of a skipper named Frank Wolff, played by Dwayne Johnson, who travels downstream with a British researcher, Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt), definitely takes some other cues from the classic John Huston film The African Queen … Which has led many fans to wonder: is Jungle Cruise a remake of The African Queen ?

Is Jungle Cruise a Remake Of The African Queen ?

In a word: no. But it does admit to drawing heavily from the classic film which starred Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. The original Disneyland Jungle Cruise ride, which opened in 1955, was designed by Walt Disney and Imagineer Harper Goff, who said he was inspired by the 1951 film, especially as they created the animals that the boat would travel past.

“Here’s a little context for you,” Johnson told Radio Times . “Jungle Cruise was Walt Disney’s baby. The ride has been around since 1955, which is when Disneyland first opened. It was Walt’s way of bringing a safari to people in the States; people who couldn’t necessarily go overseas or travel. I’ve been on the ride many times and it’s an incredible honor to bring it to life in this way. We also pulled inspiration from movies like The African Queen , Romancing the Stone and the Indiana Jones series.”

What Are The Similarities Between Jungle Cruise and The African Queen ?

In addition to the basic plot that sees a grizzled skipper transporting a slightly more refined lady downriver, both films are set during World War I. But while The African Queen took place (and was filmed) in Africa, Jungle Cruise is set in South America, though it was filmed in Hawaii and Atlanta. While both Blunt and Hepburn’s characters have brothers who appear in the film, Jungle Cruise gives Jack Whitehall, who plays MacGregor Houghton, a much more substantial role. And in both films, our protagonists are antagonized by German forces whom they are fighting with.

One major difference is that while The African Queen is based in reality, Jungle Cruise features a mystical Tree of Life that Dr. Houghton wants to find to harness its magical energy and healing powers. A glowing CGI tree in the middle of the jungle? That’s certainly one thing Bogey and Hepburn never crossed paths with in their time.

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In the pantheon of Disney movies based on Disney theme park rides, "Jungle Cruise" is pretty good—leagues better than dreck like "Haunted Mansion," though not quite as satisfying as the original "Pirates of the Caribbean."

The most pleasant surprise is that director Jaume Collet-Serra (" The Shallows ") and a credited team of five, count 'em, writers have largely jettisoned the ride's mid-century American colonial snarkiness and casual racism (a tradition only recently eliminated ). Setting the revamp squarely in the wheelhouse of blockbuster franchise-starters like " Raiders of the Lost Ark ," " Romancing the Stone " and "The Mummy," and pushing the fantastical elements to the point where the story barely seems to be taking place in our universe, it's a knowingly goofy romp, anchored to the banter between its leads, an English feminist and adventurer played by Emily Blunt and a riverboat captain/adventurer played by Dwayne Johnson .

Notably, however, even though the stars' costumes (and a waterfall sequence) evoke the classic "The African Queen"—John Huston's comic romance/action film starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn ; worth looking up if you've never watched it—the sexual chemistry between the two is nonexistent, save for a few fleeting moments, like when Frank picks up the heroine‘s hand-cranked silent film camera and captures affectionate images of her. At times the leads seem more like a brother and sister needling each other than a will they/won’t they bantering couple. Lack of sexual heat is often (strangely) a bug, or perhaps a feature, in films starring Johnson, the four-quadrant blockbuster king (though not on Johnson’s HBO drama "Ballers"). Blunt keeps putting out more than enough flinty looks of interest to sell a romance, but her leading man rarely reflects it back at her. Fortunately, the film's tight construction and prolific action scenes carry it, and Blunt and Johnson do the irresistible force/immovable object dynamic well enough, swapping energies as the story demands.

Blunt's character, Lily Houghton, is a well-pedigreed adventurer who gathers up maps belonging to her legendary father and travels to the Amazon circa 1916 to find the Tears of the Moon, petals from a "Tree of Life"-type of fauna that can heal all infirmities. She and her snooty, pampered brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall) hire Frank "Skipper" Wolff (Johnson) to bring them to their destination. The only notable concession to the original theme park ride comes here: Wolff's day job is taking tourists upriver and making cheesy jokes in the spirit of "hosts" on Disney Jungle Cruise rides of yore. On the mission, Johnson immediately settles into a cranky but funny old sourpuss vibe, a la John Wayne or Harrison Ford , and inhabits it amiably enough, even though buoyant, almost childlike optimism comes more naturally to him than world-weary gruffness.

The supporting cast is stacked with overqualified character players. Paul Giamatti plays a gold-toothed, sunburned, cartoonishly “Italian” harbor master who delights at keeping Frank in debt. Edgar Ramirez is creepy and scary as a conquistador whose curse from centuries ago has trapped him in the jungle. Jesse Plemons plays the main baddie, Prince Joachim, who wants to filch the power of the petals for the Kaiser back in Germany (he's Belloq to the stars' Indy and Marion, trying to swipe the Ark). Unsurprisingly, given his track record, Plemons steals the film right out from under its leads.

Collet-Serra keeps the action moving along, pursuing a more classical style than is commonplace in recent live-action Disney product (by which I mean, the blocking and editing have a bit of elegance, and you always know where characters are in relation to each other). The editing errs on the side of briskness to such an extent that affecting, beautiful, or spectacular images never get to linger long enough to become iconic. The CGI is dicey, particularly on the larger jungle animals—was the production rushed, or were the artists just overworked?—and there are moments when everything seems so rubbery/plasticky that you seem to be watching the first film that was actually shot on location at Disney World.

But the staging and execution of the chases and fights compensates. Derivative of films that were themselves highly derivative, "Jungle Cruise" has the look and feel of a paycheck gig for all involved, but everyone seems to be having a great time, including the filmmakers.

In theaters and on Disney+ for a premium charge starting Friday, July 30th.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Jungle Cruise (2021)

Rated PG-13 for sequences of adventure violence.

127 minutes

Dwayne Johnson as Frank Wolff

Emily Blunt as Dr. Lily Houghton

Jack Whitehall as McGregor Houghton

Edgar Ramírez as Aguirre

Jesse Plemons as Prince Joachim

Paul Giamatti as Nilo

Jaume Collet-Serra

Writer (story)

Glenn Ficarra
Josh Goldstein
John Norville

Cinematographer

Flavio Martínez Labiano
Joel Negron
James Newton Howard

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How ‘Jungle Cruise’s’ Look Evolved From Disneyland Ride to Dwayne Johnson Movie

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Dwayne Johnson as Frank and Emily Blunt as Lily in JUNGLE CRUISE. Photo by Frank Masi. © 2020 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The original Jungle Cruise boat ride first opened in July 1955 at Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif. and has been amusing visitors ever since.

Over the years, the river has changed with the addition of an elephant bathing pool, gorillas and a new piranha scene. Disney also updated the ride by removing racist and colonial depictions just in time for the release of “Jungle Cruise,” in theaters and streaming on Disney Plus Premier.

The film’s production designer, Jean-Vincent Puzos , had several extensive sets to oversee: a London scene for the movie’s opening and closing and a remote village in the heart of the Amazon. The most complex were the sprawling jungle port town of Porto Velho and boat La Quila, owned by Frank ( Dwayne Johnson ).

Building La Quila

Skipper Frank uses the La Quila to give tours around the river, and it becomes a centerpiece of the film. Puzos pulled from real-life historical references, as well as from adventure classics such as “The African Queen,” “Indiana Jones” and “Romancing the Stone.”

“This was the most important set on the movie. It was a prototype of the attraction and had an ‘African Queen’ style to it. But we wanted to push it visually,” he says.

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“I researched steamboats and tugboats. I would go to scrap yards, but also looked at photos from books from Canada, South America and North America to ensure I had a landscape of possibilities. We also looked at the boats used by conquistadors from the 16th and 17th centuries.

“Once we had the scale, we decided to build the boat 39 feet long. It could be used by one person, but also fit the tourists who were on the Jungle Cruise at the beginning.

“The first week of prep, I went to Disneyland and met the people behind the scenes including the skipper and saw how the river was used.

“Inside the boat, we based that design on the actual ride with the benches that those passengers sit on. The triangle pattern aspect of the boat combined influences from the ride, the conquistadors and the immortals.

“We built two boats to avoid logistical problems. We had a boat in Hawaii and another in Atlanta that would endure all the effects. “

Porto Velho

Puzos built the port town in Kauai, Hawaii. “It was exciting because there’s the market, a harbor, the boats, a hotel and the restaurant. There’s also Frank’s workshop and Pontoon,” he says. “When you build a port like that, I love to scout and find locations. So, I built this around this snake of water where there was water on both sides, and it was a dream to build the city around it, with those four boats owned by Nilo.

“I had an incredible construction team who built those sets, the submarine and La Quila.”

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Jungle Cruise Review: A Pleasant Enough Throwback

When the House of Mouse isn't cannibalizing its own animated canon for new live-action remake fodder, Disney has proven that they're not above mining one of their theme parks' beloved rides for an adaptation when plotting their next big tentpole release. But "Jungle Cruise," a long-gestating project finally seeing the light of day in theaters and through Disney+'s Premiere Access PVOD platform, is the rare cynical cash grab that seems more principally concerned with actual crowd-pleasing than brand management or franchise development.

Sure, the film, starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt , is clearly a four-quadrant studio picture designed to sell merchandise and inspire Disney World trips. But, for the most part, it sidesteps the many irritating pitfalls most modern blockbusters fall prey to. Instead, it nails a comforting, swashbuckling tone not seen from mainstream adventure films since Stephen Sommers' "Mummy" films or Gore Verbinski's original "Pirates" trilogy, both of which "Jungle Cruise" owes a profound debt.

However, as genuinely entertaining as the film turns out to be, it is not without its frustrating drawbacks — chiefly an over-reliance on a pervasive and grating brand of humor that fails to feel of a piece with the rest of the movie's very welcome throwback vibe.

Something for everybody

"Jungle Cruise" takes a little visual inspiration from the 1951 John Huston picture "The African Queen," which also helped inspire the Disney ride this film is based on. Johnson, as riverboat captain Frank, looks like the human growth hormone version of Bogart; Blunt, as his passenger Dr. Lily Houghton, gives her ambitious scientist a little glint of Hepburn. But plot-wise, the film closely resembles the general structure and tone of 1999's "The Mummy." Like Brendan Fraser before him, Johnson's Frank is a brutish rogue tasked with helping a studious woman (Blunt) and her charming but useless brother (Jack Whitehall) go on a grand quest for a MacGuffin foretold from legend. In this case, it's The Tree of Life and the Tears of the Moon, a rare artifact Lily thinks could be used to revolutionize medicine and science.

But this being a movie, they're not the only people on this quest — Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons), a feisty Imperial German royal, is hot on their trail, hoping to use their findings to help Germany win the Great War, as the film takes place before there was a second one.

The film's script has passed through a myriad of hands, with "Blade Runner: 2049" scribe Michael Green and "Bad Santa" writing duo Glenn Ficarra & John Requa getting final credit, so there's the typical amount of tonal and plotting inconsistency at play here. But it feels less noticeable under the crackling energy and pulpy aesthetic director Jaume Collet-Serra has crafted. Particularly in the film's fun first half, every sequence has a playful and efficient visual flair that calls to mind the best Disney animated outings, as well as any number of adventure serials.

It feels like such a pleasant change of pace for Collet-Serra, perhaps best known for providing Liam Neeson the best most thoroughly enjoyable entries into his late-period action canon. Seeing the guy behind "The Commuter" and "Unknown" cut loose with a budget this big, stars this bright, and a brand name so important to Disney is a real blast. He creates a broad, easygoing canvas on which brilliant performers like Plemons and Paul Giamatti (in a smaller role as a cantankerous harbormaster) can paint big, bold portraits as cartoonish as they are memorable.

It's not easy to properly embody the nostalgic sense of wonderment that Disney is always trying to capture like lightning in a bottle, but "Jungle Cruise," at its best, does a sterling job of hewing close to what has worked so well about similar adventure stories of the modern era. It's family-friendly, without feeling like it's pandering to an imaginary child that doesn't exist. It's unafraid to be silly, but not so much so that it detracts from the dramatic stakes necessary to make its action set pieces properly thrilling.

Most mercifully, the viewer can make it from the opening scene to the closing credits without the feeling that what they're watching is not a complete and satisfying film, but a cleverly packaged trailer for an as-yet-undeveloped sequel no one even had the opportunity to ask for.

But there is still one nagging flaw that holds it back from being a home run.

Maybe Vin Diesel was right

Over the years, Disney has made several attempts to bring "Jungle Cruise" to life, with a pretty close brush coming from a potential version with "Toy Story" stars Tom Hanks and Tim Allen. But unsurprisingly, it's the version with "franchise viagra" Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson attached that saw it through to completion. After all, the man is unstoppable.

At first, he does, in fact, look faintly ridiculous in his little Skipper costume, bursting out of it like a circus strongman. (Even if that curious anachronism does make you long for Shane Black's long-developed "Doc Savage" flick with Johnson in the lead to come to life.) But within a couple of scenes, his particular brand of megawatt charisma overpowers any potential misgivings one might have about his casting, quelling questions like "didn't he just do two other jungle-themed movies?" by reminding you, "no, those were board game-related. This is for real!"

While his chemistry with Blunt has that "Romancing the Stone" interplay we all love so much and he obviously avails himself quite nicely whenever cinematic fisticuffs must be employed, Johnson's presence weighs the film's otherwise effervescent formula down. Striking the right tone in a movie like this, one ostensibly designed to send everyone home happy without outwardly alienating anyone, is delicate work. But it's not the litany of screenwriters or the director shifting gears for the first big time in his career who muddle it up. It's Johnson's inability to stop being, well, himself.

Vin Diesel famously joked that he had to teach Johnson how to act when the two starred in "Fast Five" together, something Johnson and co-star Blunt had a great laugh about on this film's press tour. General consensus around the feud posits that Diesel is a worse and less successful actor than Johnson and that he was just guarding his franchise territory for fear of the Rock stealing it out from under him. But the point Diesel was trying to make wasn't that Johnson isn't talented, but that he can't turn off his particular shtick. In most of his starring vehicles, this isn't much of a problem, because above all else, those movies, like "Skyscraper" and "Rampage," are specifically built to be delivery systems for him doing his thing. People pay to see those movies to see Johnson be Johnson, for better or worse.

When "Jungle Cruise" is firing on all cylinders, it's when Johnson finds the right groove, contorting himself to fit into the confectionary vibe everyone involved has come together to create, and it's a true joy to see. But as the film presses on, more and more scenes drag with what feel like improvisational Johnson bits, or awkward slices of comedy that feel like they were flown in from other, more grating modern movies "Jungle Cruise" otherwise feels like a welcome respite from.

It's not quite enough to fully derail the ride. Everyone gets to the destination intact and mostly satisfied by the journey. But everything else works so surprisingly well that these drawbacks feel all the more offensive and harder to ignore. But when this film inevitably does strong numbers, at home and at the box office, who's really going to look at this man, whose muscles have their own muscles, and tell him it might be time to dial it back?

Long before Jungle Cruise , Hollywood mastered the adventure romance genre

Clockwise from top left: Romancing The Stone, The African Queen, The Mummy (Screenshots)

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If you’re going to make a movie based on a theme park ride inspired by an old Hollywood classic, you could do a lot worse than The African Queen . The 1951 adventure romp that won Humphrey Bogart his sole Oscar and launched a new phase of Katharine Hepburn’s career also inspired Disneyland’s original 1955 Jungle Cruise river boat attraction. That ride, in turn, has now inspired a big summer blockbuster starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt. And in a broader sense, The African Queen set the template for the genre that Jungle Cruise is very much trying to ape : the “adventure romance,” a.k.a. movies that look like Indiana Jones flicks but have the heart of Nora Ephron rom-coms.

Adventure romances are sort of like the American version of India’s “masala movies.” They blend action, comedy, romance, and melodrama in about equal measure against picturesque backgrounds in order to offer maximum bang for your buck, with something that appeals to everyone. It’s a pretty flexible genre, with everything from Errol Flynn’s The Adventures Of Robin Hood to the first Pirates Of The Caribbean movie loosely fitting the bill, while The Princess Bride , Stardust , and any number of Disney animated films get there via fairy-tale trappings. The tone tends to sit between old-fashioned earnestness and winking self-awareness, and the influences range from Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson to Charlie Chaplin and Looney Tunes.

But in what I’m defining as their purest form, adventure romances are specifically adventure movies filtered through a female lens. While pretty much all conventional action-adventures have romantic subplots, adventure romances pull from the romantic comedy template by putting women’s stories front and center. Unlike in Raiders Of The Lost Ark or National Treasure , where the female love interests are smart and brave but very much along for the male hero’s journey, women drive the plot in an adventure romance. These films delightfully celebrate the inner strength of shy writers, bumblingly enthusiastic bookworms, and repressed “old maids.” Along with The African Queen, the other two gold standards for this particular template are 1984’s Romancing The Stone and 1999’s The Mummy .

Each of these films put their leading lady and her goals in the foreground. In The African Queen, Rose Sayer (Hepburn) is a British Methodist missionary in East Africa who wants to avenge her brother’s death while doing her country proud on the eve of the First World War. In Romancing The Stone, Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) is a timid 1980s romance novelist who needs to travel to Colombia to rescue her kidnapped sister. And in The Mummy, Evelyn Carnahan (Rachel Weisz) is a 1920s librarian and Egyptologist who wants to make an archeological find worthy of the Bembridge scholars. The men these women rope in to help them are reluctant allies or hired guns. And the main arc of an adventure romance isn’t about a woman falling for a dashing swashbuckler, but a swashbuckler falling for a woman’s moral certainty and inner confidence.

The inherent playfulness of the genre starts with the fact that even though the female lead may look like a prim-and-proper stick in the mud, she’s actually anything but. When we first meet Hepburn’s Rose, her buttoned-up Edwardian outfit calls to mind a fragile porcelain doll. But director John Huston realized that the way into C.S. Forester’s source novel was to have Hepburn play the role like Eleanor Roosevelt—all staunch convictions, warm enthusiasm, and hidden eccentricities. No sooner has Rose taken refuge with uncouth, gin-swilling mechanic Charlie Allnut (Bogart) than she’s come up with a plan to traverse an untraversable river and turn his tiny steamboat into a makeshift torpedo they can use to sink a German warship. Charlie agrees solely because he’s convinced that Rose will get cold feet at the first sign of danger. Instead, each thrilling brush with death just brings her one step closer to embracing the fullness of her capabilities.

Similarly, Romancing The Stone ends with Joan’s rugged jungle guide Jack T. Colton (Michael Douglas) reaffirming that she doesn’t need his help to save the day. “You’re gonna be all right, Joan Wilder,” he tells her. “You always were.” The point of an adventure romance isn’t to transform the female lead into a tough-as-nails action heroine, but to highlight the unique set of skills she already has. In one tense Romancing The Stone sequence , Jack’s instinct is to take a “shoot first, ask questions later” approach to a sticky situation involving some drug smugglers. Joan tries a gentler, more communicative method, and winds up finding an improbable ally in a chipper drug lord who just happens to be a massive fan of her novels.

Written by first-time screenwriter Diane Thomas and directed by a pre- Back To The Future Robert Zemeckis, Romancing The Stone starts as the most clichéd version of what this type of story can be, with Joan wearing heels as she traipses through the jungle and stomping her foot in frustration when Jack rudely throws her suitcase off a cliff. Yet the film gets over the oil-and-water dynamic quicker than you’d expect—certainly in comparison to the similar but much more annoying dynamics in Leap Year or Jurassic World . Joan proves herself the moment she decides to cross a dilapidated rope bridge that Jack is too scared to attempt. (While the film’s poster shows Joan desperately clinging to Jack as he confidently swings on a vine like Tarzan, in the movie she’s actually the one who pulls off that move first and he merely copies her.) From there on out, Joan and Jack are mostly equals, with a romance that’s consummated about halfway through the movie, rather than at the very end, which is the same smart structural choice that The African Queen makes as well.

That’s because the real appeal of an adventure romance comes from the eventual respectful cooperation, not the initial bickering. The genre lends itself to all kinds of different metaphorical readings—for courtship, sex, and most of all, marriage. Crucial to making that arc work is the fact that the male lead is softer than he appears at first glance. In Romancing The Stone, Jack quietly opens up about his failed dream of owning a sailboat before later impressing Joan with his salsa hips on the dance floor. In The African Queen, Charlie tries to make amends for some drunken rudeness by shaving off his stubble and cleaning up the shabby boat. The men in these movies are more respectful and less sexist than you’d usually expect for this type of dynamic. While they may look like Indiana Jones, they act more like Han Solo—a character who always had a healthy dose of goofy softness under his cool guy demeanor.

And no actor better carries on that Solo legacy than Brendan Fraser in The Mummy. Writer/director Stephen Sommers’ loose remake of the 1932 Universal monster movie is a slightly different beast than The African Queen or Romancing The Stone in that it’s more of an effects-driven ensemble film rather than a “two people on a mission” romp. But it earns its place in the adventure romance canon based almost entirely on the incredible chemistry between Fraser and Weisz. Much of their love story unfolds through the way Fraser’s Rick O’Connell stares at Evelyn in respectful awe as she monologues about some obscure bit of Egyptian lore crucial to their search for the lost city of Hamunaptra. While a rival team of archeologists scoff at the idea of an expedition being led by a woman, Rick is more than happy to let Evelyn be the brains of the operation. After their big climactic kiss at the end of the movie, he nuzzles her nose with his nose , which is exactly the sort of gentle gesture that marks The Mummy as a romance as much as an action-adventure.

Around The Mummy ’s 20th anniversary, there were all sorts of glowing retrospectives about what the film does right, particularly with how perfectly Weisz and Fraser deepen their respective archetypes. (The film’s legacy is also helped by the fact that it arrived in that brief late-’90s sweet spot where filmmakers elegantly combined the burgeoning possibilities of CGI with classic practical effects.) While the cast members were absolutely baffled about what kind of film they were making at the time, Sommers knew just what masala mixture this story called for. Universal Pictures had spent about a decade trying to crack a Mummy reboot as a small-budget horror film with directors like George Romero and Joe Dante before Sommers came in with his game-changing vision for an old-fashioned, big-budget screwball romantic-comedy adventure.

Throughout The Mummy, Sommers understands that the key to making an adventure romance work is that its action scenes need to be both exciting and funny. He also films his male and female leads in an equally adoring way, not so much objectifying one or the other as just luxuriating in the beauty of the human form. And Sommers gets extra points for the fact that in The Mummy ’s 2001 sequel he depicts Rick and Evelyn as a happy, sexy married couple, rather than splitting them apart in order to retread the beats of the original, which is the choice that most sequels lazily make (including Romancing The Stone ’s lackluster one, The Jewel Of The Nile ).

There’s a breezy camaraderie to these adventure romances that’s all the more remarkable when you consider the behind-the-scenes struggles it took to make them. The Mummy, Romancing The Stone, and The African Queen all have legendary horror stories of shooting on location, where heat, bugs, snakes, illness, and weather were regular enemies. Fraser was nearly strangled for real during a hanging scene . An alligator wrangler was mauled on the set of Romancing The Stone. Bogart and Huston were the only ones on The African Queen shoot who avoided dysentery because they drank whiskey instead of water. It’s pretty incredible that none of that production stress winds up onscreen.

The fact that these movies are more fun to watch than they are to make is perhaps one reason they tend to be released so few and far between. Disney’s Tangled is probably the purest adventure romance we’ve had in our current era of masculine, weirdly chaste superhero movies. But I also think Hollywood has a tendency to underestimate the appetite for these kind of romantic adventures, as evidenced by the fact that Romancing The Stone and The Mummy were both surprise sleeper hits . The lack of modern adventure romances is especially a shame because there’s definitely room for improvement in the genre. As with the Indiana Jones films, The African Queen, Romancing The Stone, and The Mummy all have their fair share of problems related to colonialism, racial othering, and stereotyping. If there’s one area in which Jungle Cruise immediately improves on its predecessors, it’s in casting an actor of color in an actual lead role, rather than as a one-note sidekick or baddie.

Still, the flexibility of the adventure romance genre seems tailor-made to evolve with the times while keeping the best of its sneakily subversive take on gendered power dynamics. The genre is about two very different people who must learn to work as a team, a timeless metaphor if there ever was one. And while adventure romances aren’t the deepest films, they take real finesse to pull off tonally, which is what makes it so satisfying when they do. As Roger Ebert noted in his review of The Mummy : “There is hardly a thing I can say in its favor, except that I was cheered by nearly every minute of it.”

As Hollywood scrambles to figure out what the hell audiences want after its pandemic pause, the broad appeal and sly savvy of the adventure romance genre could be the answer. Toward the end of Romancing The Stone, Joan clarifies that she’s not a hopeless romantic but a hopeful one, which feels like a lovely sentiment for our current era. But if filmmakers want the genre to thrive, they’ll need to remember to do more than just pull from action-adventure blockbusters. The heart of an adventure romance is a romantic comedy. So that’s the genre to study for anyone who wants to get this unique cinematic blend just right.

Next time: The underappreciated charms of Definitely, Maybe.

Disney Will Remove Jungle Cruise Ride’s Colonialist Depictions of Indigenous Africans

The entertainment conglomerate announced plans to revamp the attraction, which has drawn increased scrutiny in recent months

Livia Gershon

Daily Correspondent

On Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise ride, visitors sail past “ Trader Sam ,” an animatronic salesman who offers to exchange two of his shrunken heads “for one of yours.” Nearby, spear-wielding African “headhunters” plan an ambush—a threat underscored by the piles of human skulls dotting the landscape.

Sixty-six years after the riverboat attraction first debuted, Disney has announced plans to overhaul what critics describe as the ride’s racist depictions of Indigenous peoples.

As Brady MacDonald reports for the Orange County Register , the company’s “Imagineers” will update scenes featuring the shrunken head dealer and a rhinoceros chasing a safari group up a tree. The company will also add a new scene featuring chimpanzees on a wrecked ship.

“As Imagineers, it is our responsibility to ensure experiences we create and stories we share reflect the voices and perspectives of the world around us,” says Disney executive Carmen Smith in a statement .

Per the Los Angeles Times ’ Todd Martens, the first Jungle Cruise appeared at Disneyland when the park opened in Anaheim, California, in 1955. A second iteration served as one of Disney World’s original attractions, welcoming visitors to the Orlando, Florida, theme park in 1971, according to the Orlando Sentinel . Disney describes the ride as “a scenic and comedic boat tour of exotic rivers across Asia, Africa, and South America.”

The Jungle Cruise’s designers incorporated influences including Disney nature documentaries and The African Queen , an Academy Award–winning 1951 movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. As the Los Angeles Times notes, Disneyland only added the spear-waving Africans and Trader Sam in 1957.

Disneyland’s current rhinoceros scene shows the animal chasing a tour group up a tree. A white traveler clings to the top of the trunk, while local guides clamber to safety below. The new version will depict all of the group members as guests of a previous Jungle Cruise tour.

Criticism of the ride ramped up in June after Disney announced major changes to another popular attraction, Splash Mountain . As Nora McGreevy wrote for Smithsonian magazine at the time, the ride was originally based on the 1946 movie Song of the South , which features romanticized, stereotypical depictions of black servants on a plantation in post-Civil War Georgia. The revamped version of the ride eliminates references to the movie, instead drawing on The Princess and the Frog (2009), Disney’s first film featuring a black princess.

Following news of Splash Mountain’s overhaul, many social media users called attention to the continued use of racist stereotypes in other Disney attractions, including the Jungle Cruise, as Jim Vejvoda reported for IGN .

“The Jungle Cruise is legit jaw-dropping in its offensiveness,” wrote comedian and actor Bryan Safi on Twitter in June.

Revised version of the Jungle Cruise's rhinoceros scene

Ryan Minor , a historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara, traces the colonial influences of the Jungle Cruise in an essay for the Enchanted Archives . He notes that the ride mirrors sections of Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novel Heart of Darkness . One of Conrad’s descriptions of Africans reads, “They howled, and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity… the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar.”

Minor writes that this view of Africans as “primitive” stemmed from the European scramble to colonize Africa in the 19th century. Colonizers across the continent and elsewhere used the view of non-white people as “savages” to justify their actions. Since then, books like Tarzan of the Apes and movies like The African Queen have normalized these stereotypes for European and American audiences.

“While we might not even realize it, these stereotypes are deeply [i]ngrained in our cultural imaginations and continue to influence our collective understandings of Africa and the people who live there,” Minor adds.

Disney says the new version of the ride will focus more on the wise-cracking “skipper” character played by human tour guides, who will now have an animated counterpart.

“When we consider making changes to a classic attraction, we focus on ways to ‘plus’ the experience,” says creative executive Chris Beatty in the statement. “The skippers of the Jungle Cruise bring humor to guests of all ages, and we’re excited to be adding to that legacy.”

The changes arrive as Disney prepares for the release of a new movie based on the ride. Starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, Jungle Cruise was originally set to open in 2020 but was postponed to summer 2021 due to the pandemic.

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Livia Gershon | | READ MORE

Livia Gershon is a daily correspondent for Smithsonian. She is also a freelance journalist based in New Hampshire. She has written for JSTOR Daily , the Daily Beast , the Boston Globe , HuffPost and Vice , among others.

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A Ride on the Lazy River

Jaume Collet-Serra does his best to inject some weird electricity into ‘Jungle Cruise,’ but even a B-movie virtuoso like him can get swallowed up in Disney’s waters

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There’s a wry bit of staging early on in Jungle Cruise diagramming the brutal, bottom-line realities of the food chain; bugs, fish, and birds of different sizes keep consuming one another until the last one gets picked off by a hawk. No matter how deadly something may be, there are bigger predators hovering somewhere up above.

For fans of the Spanish B-movie virtuoso Jaume Collet-Serra— and I am one of them —this little bit of CGI choreography could read as the coded admission of a genre specialist about the nature of his latest job-for-hire. “I like to work within certain limitations and find creative solutions to the problems I’ve been given,” Collet-Serra told me in 2016. The problem posed by taking on a $200 million family franchise movie is a unique one: how to keep from completely disappearing in the belly of the beast.

Typically, Collet-Serra’s thrillers effectively hinge on the logistics of emancipation or escape, whether it’s Liam Neeson stuck on an airplane in Non-Stop , Liam Neeson stuck on a train in The Commuter , Liam Neeson stuck at Madison Square Garden in Run All Night , or (best of all) Blake Lively stuck on a rock in the ocean, trying to evade a ravenous great white shark. The Shallows ’ Jaws- meets- Gravity riff—with a little bit of Frogger thrown in—was a surprise summer hit and deservedly so: It’s a primal scare machine infused with serene, aquamarine beauty. (When Lively encounters a school of glowing jellyfish just before the climax, it’s a close encounter with a sort of Spielbergian sublimity.) Even a nasty, tasteless little throwaway like 2009’s Orphan has its ingenious aspects, including a hidden-in-plain-sight twist executed in a way that would make M. Night Shyamalan himself grin.

Jungle Cruise is not ingenious, or nasty—no nuns take a claw hammer to the skull in this one—and there’s no universe in which something this ostentatiously expensive could reasonably be called a B-movie. Like Pirates of the Caribbean before it , it’s a corporate exercise in intellectual property renovation, and in order to work, it doesn’t require artistry; if anything, too much independent vision could be a liability. But even working in mercenary mode, a bit of Collet-Serra’s trademark wit bleeds through. An early sequence shows curmudgeonly riverboat helmer Frank (Dwayne Johnson, whose muscles do not look like they belong in the year 1916) scamming a gaggle of tourists with an array of clunky, prefab mechanical gimmicks he’s rigged along his usual route—a veteran’s tricks of the trade. Over and over again, Frank’s passengers willingly fork out wads of cash for the pleasure of being taken advantage of; without ever officially breaking the fourth wall, the scene simultaneously celebrates and lambasts the movie’s roots as an old-school theme park ride.

The original Walt Disney World Jungle Cruise, which wound its way through 1,900 feet of artificially murky water in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, was conceived of as an experiential cousin to the studio’s 1950s True-Life Adventures documentary series—exotic travelogues aimed at family audiences, featuring on-location footage narrated with pedagogical stiffness. The ride has gone through multiple upgrades over the years, but the theatrical release of Jungle Cruise dovetails with Disney’s PR-driven decision to refurbish the attraction on an intellectual level: the newly unveiled versions will excise “negative depictions of native people,” and curb the underlying British-imperialist pastiche.

The contradiction between an old-school adventure serial tone à la Raiders of the Lost Ark and cautiously progressive politics can be uneasy, and Jungle Cruise struggles when it downshifts into PC point-scoring mode. It’s considerably more successful when it leans into its retro textures and acknowledges the sources it’s so brazenly stealing from. In addition to the True-Life Adventures docs, designer Bill Evans based Jungle Cruise on John Huston’s classic romance The African Queen , and Johnson’s rumpled Humphrey Bogart cosplay as Frank is one of several nostalgic touches that show Collet-Serra and his screenwriting team goofing sweetly on movie history.

For instance: Having secured Frank’s services for a trip down the Amazon in search of the mythical Tree of Life—specifically in hopes of procuring an enchanted petal that could be used to cure all of the world’s sicknesses—indomitable British botanist Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt) brings aboard a hand-cranked camera that she uses to capture twitchy, pixelated black-and-white footage of the skipper. These interludes must be the first time (notwithstanding any wrestling promos) that the Rock has ever been shot in black and white, and the effect is unexpected and charming. Meanwhile, as an evil German aristocrat trying to outpace Lily to the Tree (and use its powers to swing World War I to the Fatherland), Jesse Plemons seems to be impersonating Werner Herzog circa the cursed, jungle-set making of the documentary Burden of Dreams —a suspicion heightened by the equally maligned presence of a supernaturally reanimated 16th century conquistador named Aguirre (Edgar Ramírez), whose wrath poses its own threat to our heroes.

That these references are likely to go over the heads of the film’s intended audience of children (and most of their parental guardians) is a strictly no-harm, no-foul proposition; where a movie like Space Jam: A New Legacy is fully dependent on its pop-cultural allusions, Jungle Cruise is aiming for the kind of broad, crowd-pleasing tone that Stephen Sommers achieved in 1999’s The Mummy (the franchise that turned Johnson into a movie star in the first place). What made The Mummy enjoyable was a dopey charm distinct from actual stupidity, and which had a lot to do with the performances of Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. Johnson and Blunt have a similar dynamic: her graceful slapstick physicality bounces humorously off his granite-like presence, as do her deadpan line readings. The back-and-forth banter isn’t at the level of The African Queen but the rhythm they work up isn’t too bad, and it suits Collet-Serra’s on-the-fly sensibility—his gift for keeping even the most clichéd material moving fluidly from left-to-right.

Where Jungle Cruise slows down—and gets stuck—is in its elaborate mythology (which also scuttled the Pirates series) and those aforementioned attempts at political correctness, the most widely publicized of which involves the character of Lily’s brother McGregor (Jack Whitehall). In the wake of Avengers: Endgame offering up a blink-or-miss-it bit involving a gay member of a support group and Josh Gad taking credit for supposedly queering his goofy sidekick role in Beauty and the Beast —neither exactly a cause for celebration— Jungle Cruise is being proudly touted by its studio as a third-time’s-the-charm breakthrough. During a bit of downtime in between action scenes, McGregor explains to Frank that he puts up with Lily’s globe-trotting antics because his sister stood by him at a moment of familial ostracization because his romantic interests “lay elsewhere.” “To elsewhere,” Frank toasts, all but winking at the screen, a live-and-let-live benediction from the People’s Champ.

All of which is nice enough, but there’s a crucial difference between having a major character just casually be gay and hinging his development on closeted frustration. The early 20th century setting becomes justification for a deceptively double-edged kind of representation—an exchange that scans more like a lesson in tolerance than genuine narrative or emotional development. (Jungle Cruise gets to have its gay-panicky innuendo “fun”moments later anyway, when McGregor asks Frank about sticking something into him.) A bolder movie might have had Johnson meet him face to face, or at least given Whitehall a more desirable comedy-duo partner than an animated jaguar. But then it would be more difficult to neatly excise the moment in order to appease conservative foreign censors. (Compare the calculated coyness of the McGregor subplot with the centering of a queer teenage girl in Netflix’s recent and acclaimed animated comedy The Mitchells vs. the Machines .)

There’s a similar self-consciousness in the way Jungle Cruise revises the retrograde (and Disney-driven) trope of indigenous cannibals, turning the mid-film appearance of an Amazon tribe into another joke about expectations and fakery—one that lands with a thud. By the time Collet-Serra cuts to an upper gallery of women applauding Lily’s stinging, public rebuke of boys’ club sexism, the pandering has become as much of a lazy cliché as the the magic totems and sunken civilizations stitching the story together—line items getting ticked off methodically in the service of broad, cross-demographic appeal. The nicest thing that you can say about Jungle Cruise is that it’s well-made, with florid colors, intricate production design, and a moody musical score by James Newton Howard that sounds weirdly like Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters.” But it’s a fine line between craftsmanship and engineering, and between being an artist and following a blueprint. At one point, Lily looks over an ancient river map and concludes that the cartographer must have been a “minor genius,” which could be another inside joke about authorship. Hopefully, as far as Collet-Serra and his minor moviemaking genius are concerned, he follows his own path out of the theme park toward somewhere grittier.

Adam Nayman is a film critic, teacher, and author based in Toronto; his book The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Films Together is available now from Abrams.

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Review: 'Jungle Cruise' is made from spare parts of better movies but kids will love it

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Emily “millennial Mary Poppins” Blunt knock themselves out in “Jungle Cruise” to keep kids wowed with excitement as everything from headhunters to snapping piranhas go on the attack.

Jungle Cruise

Join Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt for the adventure of a lifetime on Disney's "Jungle Cruise," a rollicking thrill-ride down the Amazon.

The movie, now playing in theaters and streaming on Disney+ Premier Access , is based on a Disney theme-park ride that’s been at it since -- wait for it --1955. That was just a few years after Walt Disney himself watched Humphrey Bogart skipper Katharine Hepburn down river in “The African Queen” and felt inspired to build the still-thriving attraction.

“Jungle Cruise” is nowhere near the league of that film classic. It’s a goofball throwaway that just wants to give family audiences a thrill ride down the Amazon, and it begs to be compared with another Disney excursion, “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

And that’s the problem.

“Jungle Cruise” borrows so heavily from “Pirates,” not to mention “The Mummy” and the incomparable “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” that it’s basically a knockoff. Johnson is a musclebound charmer, but small potatoes next to Johnny Depp, who swanned so deliciously through the role of pirate Jack Sparrow that he won an Oscar nomination.

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Acting awards are not in the cards for “Jungle Cruise ,” though that’ll be no big whoop to preteens who manage to circumvent the film’s inexplicable PG-13 rating. Set in 1916, two years into World War I, the movie is built to distract young’uns with all-stops-out special effects.

Johnson plays Frank Wolff, the captain of a ramshackle riverboat who offers the cheapest jungle cruises in Brazil -- plus a nonstop flow of groan-worthy puns.

“I used to work in an orange juice factory, but I got canned,” Wolff says at one point.

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Blunt has it worse. As British scientist Lily Houghton, a female Indiana Jones who shocks society by wearing pants, she is stuck in an exposition dump of an opening scene about why Houghton and her fussy brother, MacGregor (Jack Whitehall), need to chug down the Amazon.

Houghton is in search of flower petals from an ancient tree, called Tears of the Moon, which can only be found after Houghton steals a sacred arrowhead containing a map that will lead her to there. Even a single, falling petal is said to cure any illness or break any curse.

Download the all new "Popcorn With Peter Travers " podcasts on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Tunein , Google Play Music and Stitcher .

It’s all just an excuse for director Jaume Collet-Serra, who pitted Blake Lively against an angry shark in “The Shallows,” to lead Wolff and Houghton through a series of rousing perils. Houghton's brother doesn’t do much, though his coming-out to Frank would have raised eyebrows a century ago.

Wolff and Houghton interrupt their budding romance to fight off Joachim (hammed to the hilt by Jesse Plemons), a mad German prince in a submarine, and Aguirre (Edgar Ramirez), a Spanish conquistador who’s been undead for 400 years and looks like it.

Young audiences may go “ewww” at Wolff and Houghton's awkward smooching, but they’ll perk up at their near-death experiences in treacherous rapids and with poison snakes. The real scene-stealer is a photorealistic jaguar named Proxima, who becomes everyone’s favorite pet.

“Jungle Cruise” is made up of spare parts from better movies and at over two-hours in length, it’ll be tough on short attention spans. On the plus side, it is way better than “Haunted Mansion” and “Tomorrowland,” other Disney rides that morphed into movies.

Amazingly, Johnson and Blunt still sell it. He calls her “Pants” and she dubs him “Skippy,” nicknames they both hate. But their natural warmth as performers humanize characters built from flimsy cardboard.

“Jungle Cruise" may be dim, dopey and derivative, but the kids will love it, and like the Metallica song in the film, “nothing else matters.”

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Take a 'Jungle Cruise' with Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt in first trailer for Disney's new ride-based blockbuster

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After five high-stakes voyages alongside the Pirates of the Caribbean , an ordinary Jungle Cruise sounds downright relaxing. But the first trailer for Walt Disney’s upcoming summer blockbuster suggests that audiences are in for a ride that’s even wilder than the theme-park attraction it’s based on. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, Jungle Cruise appears to be charting a course for The African Queen by way of The Mummy , with Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt standing in for Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn and Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz respectively. (Watch the trailer above.)

Like those adventure-loving odd couples, Johnson and Blunt will apparently spend a lot of their journey together bickering, a dynamic that they demonstrated for Yahoo Entertainment when we caught up with them at D23. In the film, Blunt plays Lily Houghton, a scientist headed into the deepest parts of the Amazon jungle in search of the Tree of Life. In order to get there, she hires Johnson’s riverboat captain, Frank, who boasts about having the “cheapest, but also the most thrilling” jungle cruise on the whole river. Because of the perilous nature of Lily’s journey, though, Frank drives a harder bargain to ferry her and her brother, McGregor (Jack Whitehall), upriver. “$10,000 to bring you there alive — dead is $15,000.” Why the extra 5K bump? “Dead, I’d have to carry you.”

Besides Rose Sayer and Evelyn Carnahan, there’s also a little Sundance Kid mixed into Lily’s DNA. At the end of the trailer, Frank’s little riverboat is about to plunge over a giant waterfall, and his passenger picks that exact moment to reveal an unfortunate secret: “I cannot swim!” Knowing that the fall will definitely kill her, Frank does the only logical thing and raises his rates. “The price just went up.”

Jungle Cruise ’s mixture of action and humor is going over well on Twitter, with many noting the movie’s obvious forebearers.

This aint the African Queen but it looks soooo fun!! O2H! O2H! O2H! The Jungle Cruise Trailer Brings the Disney Ride to Life! - https://t.co/6cFAAJ4ynO https://t.co/MkKlUYsUpM via @comingsoonnet — Demetri Panos (@demetripanos) October 11, 2019

// That “Jungle Cruise” trailer gave me strong “The African Queen” vibes. I knew he was going to say “the backside of water” when I saw him flushing it down. 😂 I’m more excited about it than “Onward” to be honest, but that last part with the cgi villain.. ehh.. not great. — Thomas Summers (@sortedgreen) October 11, 2019

Okay, so it's The Mummy (1999) on a river. https://t.co/Ps7b3G8urZ — Stephen T. (@GoshZilla) October 11, 2019

The characters are so similar to the Mummy, but does look fun. https://t.co/w00wLMiIit — 🎃🕸Michelle Benson🕸🎃 🔜 Scotland Comic Con (@michelleb822) October 11, 2019

RACHEL WEISZ WALKED IN THE MUMMY SO EMILY BLUNT COULD RUN IN THE JUNGLE CRUISE — julie andrews is my religion (@katiethebadger) October 11, 2019

Looks fun. Jungle Cruise meets Indiana Jones. — All ~ Troy (@allabouttroy) October 11, 2019

Also I pointed this out before, but I love the explicit call out to The African Queen (one of the principal inspirations for The Jungle Cruise attraction) via The Rock's outfit pic.twitter.com/ZO7eKjmZVi — Mark Willard (@MarkWillard85) October 11, 2019

Fun fact: The African Queen famously influenced the design of the Jungle Cruise ride . That the movie version is now consciously paying homage to that movie is just the circle of Mouse House life.

Jungle Cruise sails into theaters on July 24, 2020.

Watch: Johnson and Blunt match wits over who’s the biggest scaredy-cat when it comes to theme park rides:

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Tuesday Aug 03, 2021

The African Queen VS Jungle Cruise

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The boys dive in to another studio summer blockbuster Jungle Cruise staring Dwayne the Wrong Johnson and Emily Watson and pair it up with a 50's romantic classic The African Queen

Looking Forward To The New Movies (1:02) Minecraft and Jungle Cruise? (4:30) Pirates of the Caribbean and Disney Ride Films (7:00)

Jungle Cruise & The African Queen (12:51) Theme Park Rides (18:55) Jungle Cruise Review (33:02) The African Queen Talk (42:07) Emily Bluntinator (50:00) Environments Are Soft (46:29) The Rock Turned Rocked (1:01:10) A Happy Ending (1:12:20)

Emily Sues, We Leave (1:15:41)

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The African Queen (1951)

Jungle Cruise (2021)

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African Queen

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This article is about the fictitious boat. For the film of the same name, see The African Queen .

The African Queen is the titular vehicle from the 1951 non-Disney film, The African Queen and the 1935 novel by C.S. Forester of which the film was based .

1 Description
2.1 Background
3.1.1 Jungle Cruise
3.1.2 Magic of Disney Animation
3.2.1 Bengal Barbecue
3.2.2 Trader Sam's Enchanted Tiki Bar
6 References

Description [ ]

The African Queen was a small steam-launch in the 1910s which was 30 feet in length. During World War I , the Queen was converted into a makeshift torpedo-boat. The boat exploded in the year 1914 during a wreckage.

History [ ]

Background [ ].

The African Queen was a ramshackle tramp steamer used in the 1910s by Canadian boatsman/mechanic Charlie Allnut . Allnut used the boat in German East-Africa, delivering cargo for British methodist missionary colonists. In the August of 1914, World War I broke out causing Charlie to flee the colony with methodist Rose Sayer while being pursued by the German Schutztruppe .

Motivated by the death of her brother at German hands, Rose convinced Charlie to modify the African Queen into a makeshift torpedo-boat and destroy the German boat Königin Luise . On their mission, Charlie and Rose fell in love and eventually got married. The plan fell through when the torpedo ports resulted in the Queen taking in water, leading Charlie to drive it into the Königin Luise instead, exploding it. Meanwhile, Rose and Charlie escaped to land where they got married.

Jungle Cruise appearances [ ]

Disney parks [ ], jungle cruise [ ].

The African Queen inspired much of Harper Goff 's ideas for the Jungle Cruise. The designs for the boats were inspired by the titular steam-boat The African Queen from the film. The name of the boat the Congo Queen also might be inspired by the name of the film and steamer, the Congo being a region of Africa. In the Amazon River Base is an illustrated map of the surrounding regions of Ponthierville in the Belgian Congo titled, "Follow the Route of the Jungle Queen ". [1] Parts of the film The African Queen were filmed in Ponthierville. This might indicate, "The Jungle Queen" to be the parks' counterpart to the African Queen or a pseudonym for it. [2]

Magic of Disney Animation [ ]

In Minnie Mouse's Hollywood dressing-room is a poster made to mirror that of the African Queen's with the title, "The Jungle Cruise". [3] This poster has Mickey Mouse replacing Charlie Allnut, Minnie Mouse replacing Rose Sayer, and Trader Sam standing off to the side with credits to the Jungle Navigation Company . The boat replacing the Queen is not labelled but the credits identify it as likely either being the Congo Queen, the Amazon Belle , or the Ganges Gal (most likely the Congo Queen given the context).

Other connections [ ]

Bengal barbecue [ ].

There is a photograph of Rose and Charlie riding the Zambezi Miss past the African veldt and Lost Safari in this restaurant. The two are shown in possession of a 1911 portrait of Dr. Albert Falls and a stuffed Albert the Monkey from Mystic Manor . [4]

Trader Sam's Enchanted Tiki Bar [ ]

There is a post-card sent to Trader Sam from Charlie Allnut through the Jungle Navigation Company in this bar. The post-card reads, "Sam- Just a word of advice. Avoid the ' Ucayali Una ' at all costs. If you want to get up the river, call ME. - Charlie". [5]

As the 2021 Jungle Cruise film is inspired by the African Queen, the Queen's film counterpart is La Quila . Both have a similar, ramshackle appearance and both have, "Q" names.
In Kinect: Disneyland Adventures , Al B. Lost 's boat is called The Amazon Queen.

Gallery [ ]

Phone magic kingdom grand floridian rope drop-16.jpg

References [ ]

↑ https://www.easywdw.com/easy/blog/disneys-magic-kingdom-late-morning-adventureland-touring-with-jungle-cruise-pirates-and-crowds/
↑ https://www.movie-locations.com/movies/a/African-Queen.php
↑ https://www.micechat.com/44039-meet-minnie-minnie-at-disney-hollywoodstudios/
↑ https://jungleskipper.com/sea/attractions/bengal-bbq
↑ https://www.instagram.com/p/BZWe4Zjgo1G/
1 Lope de Aguirre
2 Frank Wolff
3 Dr. Lily Houghton

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How The African Queen Influenced Disney's Jungle Cruise
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Is 'Jungle Cruise' Really Just a Remake of 'The African Queen'?
12 Movies to Watch if You Like Jungle Cruise

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Humphrey Bogart's son on the parallels between The African Queen and
Humphrey Bogart's son addresses the clear parallels between The African Queen and Jungle Cruise. Plus, Stephen Bogart talks the 70th-anniversary big screen return of his father's Oscar-winning film.
'The African Queen' vs. 'Jungle Cruise': A Man, A Woman, A Boat, A
The African Queen. Up until this weekend, the number of major motion pictures about a man, a woman, and a boat navigating dangerous waters of rivers and lakes in a fierce jungle setting while ...
How The African Queen Influenced Disney's Jungle Cruise
While the African Queen is steered by a tiller in the back, the ships on the Jungle Cruise opt for a steering wheel in the front to better focus on the skipper guiding you. The flagship boat on ...
The African Queen/Jungle Cruise Comparison
The African Queen/Jungle Cruise Comparison. The African Queenis a 1951 adventure film adapted from the 1935 novel of the same name by C. S. Forester. The film was directed by John Huston and produced by Sam Spiegel. The screenplay was adapted primarily by James Agee. It was photographed in Technicolor by Jack Cardiff.
Is 'Jungle Cruise' a Remake of 'The African Queen'?
Disney's Jungle Cruise, which is out on Friday, July 30 in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access, takes its inspiration from the Walt Disney World ride of the same name, which has long been a ...
Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson Compared 'Jungle Cruise' to 'The African
How critics reacted to 'The African Queen' and 'Jungle Cruise' Currently, The African Queen has a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes . On the other hand, Jungle Cruise has a 61% rating on ...
Humphrey Bogart's son reflects on 'The African Queen' and why ...
(Jungle Cruise is based on the Disney theme parks attraction of the same name, which opened in 1955 — four years after The African Queen hit theaters. "You'll have to talk to Disney about that ...
Jungle Cruise remake
Of course, the similarities can be overstated. While like The African Queen, Jungle Cruise is set during the early years of the First World War and sees German soldiers function as a primary ...
Jungle Cruise movie review & film summary (2021)
Notably, however, even though the stars' costumes (and a waterfall sequence) evoke the classic "The African Queen"—John Huston's comic romance/action film starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn; worth looking up if you've never watched it—the sexual chemistry between the two is nonexistent, save for a few fleeting moments, like when Frank picks up the heroine's hand-cranked ...
'Jungle Cruise': From Disneyland Ride to Movie
Jungle Cruise production designer Jean-Vincent Puzos was inspired by The African Queen when designing Dwayne Johnson's Disney film.
Jungle Cruise Review: A Pleasant Enough Throwback
"Jungle Cruise" takes a little visual inspiration from the 1951 John Huston picture "The African Queen," which also helped inspire the Disney ride this film is based on. Johnson, as riverboat ...
On the fun of The African Queen, Romancing The Stone, and The Mummy
And in a broader sense, The African Queen set the template for the genre that Jungle Cruise is very much trying to ape: the "adventure romance," a.k.a. movies that look like Indiana Jones ...
Disney Will Remove Jungle Cruise Ride's Colonialist Depictions of
The Jungle Cruise's designers incorporated influences including Disney nature documentaries and The African Queen, an Academy Award-winning 1951 movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine ...
'Jungle Cruise' Really Wants to Be Weird
In addition to the True-Life Adventures docs, designer Bill Evans based Jungle Cruise on John Huston's classic romance The African Queen, and Johnson's rumpled Humphrey Bogart cosplay as Frank ...
Face-Off: 'The African Queen' vs. 'Jungle Cruise'
The African Queen (1951) PG | 105 min | Adventure, Drama, Romance. In WWI East Africa, a gin-swilling Canadian riverboat captain is persuaded by a strait-laced English missionary to undertake a trip up a treacherous river and use his boat to attack a German gunship. Director: John Huston | Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Robert ...
Review: 'Jungle Cruise' is made from spare parts of better movies but
"Jungle Cruise" borrows so heavily from "Pirates," not to mention "The Mummy" and the incomparable "Raiders of the Lost Ark," that it's basically a knockoff. Johnson is a musclebound charmer, but small potatoes next to Johnny Depp, who swanned so deliciously through the role of pirate Jack Sparrow that he won an Oscar nomination.
Take a 'Jungle Cruise' with Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt in first
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, Jungle Cruise appears to be charting a course for The African Queen by way of The Mummy, with Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt standing in for Humphrey Bogart and ...
The African Queen VS Jungle Cruise
The boys dive in to another studio summer blockbuster Jungle Cruise staring Dwayne the Wrong Johnson and Emily Watson and pair it up with a 50's romantic classic The African Queen. Looking Forward To The New Movies (1:02) Minecraft and Jungle Cruise? (4:30) Pirates of the Caribbean and Disney Ride Films (7:00) Jungle Cruise & The African Queen ...
The African Queen
This article is about the 1951 film. For the fictitious boat of the same name, see African Queen. The African Queen is a 1951 film which was a source of inspiration behind the Jungle Cruise ride and film. It was based on a 1935 book of the same name by author C.S. Forester. This film was set in German East-Africa in the August of 1914. British methodist missionary Rose Sayer is working in ...
Poll: Face-Off: 'The African Queen' vs. 'Jungle Cruise'
The theme-park attraction that inspired Jungle Cruise (2021) is based on John Huston's masterpiece, The African Queen (1951). Both films share similar plot elements, themes, location, etc. ... Poll: Face-Off: 'The African Queen' vs. 'Jungle Cruise' A poll by Maxence_G. The theme-park attraction that inspired Jungle Cruise (2021) is based on ...
African Queen
The African Queen was a ramshackle tramp steamer used in the 1910s by Canadian boatsman/mechanic Charlie Allnut. Allnut used the boat in German East-Africa, delivering cargo for British methodist missionary colonists. In the August of 1914, World War I broke out causing Charlie to flee the colony with methodist Rose Sayer while being pursued by ...
Matt's 'Jungle Cruise' Film THEORY!
The Jungle Cruise is the next big movie based on a Disney Parks ride...BUT what could it possibly be about?? A nature documentary? A remake of 'The African Q...
Fort Lauderdale's Best Attraction
OFFICIAL WEBSITE | Jungle Queen Riverboat is Fort Lauderdale's longest-running attraction, open-air cruising on the waterways since 1935! Skip to content. HOME; ... • 90-min Afternoon Sightseeing Cruise: 2:30pm • Island Dinner, Show & Sightseeing Cruise: 6:00pm. Saturday & Sunday Only

Humphrey Bogart's son addresses the clear parallels between The African Queen and Jungle Cruise

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