The film, “Jungle Cruise” is an astonishing action-fantasy movie. Emily Blunt plays a young researcher ( Dr Lily Houghton ) who is portrayed to be a confident, intelligent, thoughtful, adventurous young woman. Who is a role model and inspiration for female rights. She teams up with a charming boat skipper called Frank Wolff (played by Dwanye Johnson) to locate a mystical and magical tree in the Amazon, known as the legend ‘The Tears of The Moon’. Dr Lily hopes to retrieve this fascinating sorcery to help heal the world and improve the future of medicine with her brother McGregor Houghton (played by Jack Whitehall). However, they face many obstacles and challenges along the way.
The film is based around 1916, during The Great War. The attention to detail was consistent through-out this movie, involving patterns, shapes and textures. This indicated the uniqueness of the Jungle and how it appears to be ancient and historic.
The film’s story works well overall because a lot of planning contributes directly to the plot. I think it was really clever how everything aligned at the end of the film and was explained clearly to the audience. Although, there were times where I did not understand certain elements of the film.
The opening of this film included a different range of cinematography, such as: camera angles, types of shots and the distances between the subject. The different camera movements and techniques that were used captured a magnificent perspective of the situation which may be taking place. I particularly enjoyed the special effects used to captivate the viewers attention by allowing the audience to feel as if they are themselves embarking on an adventurous boat ride!
The lighting was really significant through-out this film as helped to portray the character’s emotions effectively and helped connect the visual and scenes together. Although the mood and tone changes from the beginning to the end of the film, at first it is bright, colourful indicating an energetic and vibrant environment. It then reverses to heartfelt, deep, intimate and sentimental through the use of darker colours. The use of cinematography emphasised the contrast in colours and worked extremely well together with the story line.
In addition, the same adventurous soundtrack was reused to represent a heroic characteristic approach. This reminded me of ‘Pirates of The Caribbean’ when the iconic theme tune was added to action scenes.
I would recommend this movie because I really enjoyed the meaning behind the storyline and how it was communicated to the audience. I also loved the humour and adventure side of the film. I think it was cleverly developed with the amount of detail that was included and designed within the scenes and as an audience member I found the overall production to be believable and imaginative. As always, I was impressed by Emily’s Blunts acting skills, her performance in character contributed to a different sort of role than she has done before.
If you are someone who has a passion for cinematography, then this movie is for you!
By Cassey Wayman
BFI Film Academy – Screen South