So excited and agree with @Scott W. that there is a major Brendan Fraser The Mummy vibe. Which in my opinion is totally a great thing!
Aaaand here’s the trailer. Sorry for the double post!
Edit: Here’s the official poster as well.
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So this is coming out this Friday and Disney is still not letting reviews come out for the movie. I had a slice of hope that maybe it’d be a fun time, but holding back reviews is giving me little hope.
Reviews have it at a 70% on RT with 60 reviews. The average score on those reviews is 6.4/10.
From everything i've heard, they worked the dad jokes in and the overall spirit of the ride - which is really the spirit of The African Queen when you think of it - remains.She's not everyone's cup of tea, but Grace Randolph is an unabashed theme park fan, and she said fans of the ride will eat this up.
The movie looks like it will be opening roughly to Space Jam 2 numbers, and if recent history tells us anything, we should probably be expecting a 65-70% drop next weekend on the film.
Saw it with an opening night Disney Springs crowd, about the best possible way for a movie like this. In fact, I'm curious how the pre-opening credit cruise--basically--plays in a less theme park friendly city.Dwayne Johnson doing the ride's best jokes
The first half is a fun mash-up of the The Mummy and Pirates of the Caribbean, with Johnson and Blunt's charisma and chemistry and a massive real life set carrying the mostly hackneyed plot. But at some point the movie starts to drag and never really recovers. It goes on way too long, and the plot gets too convoluted
with characters directly ripped off from the Pirates sequels, only with less realistic CGI. Skipper Frank has a pet that is also only one step up from Xena: Warrior Princess level effects.And the finale is set in a dark cave I'm sure was mostly rendered on a computer.
I saw similar third act complaints about Black Widow--a movie I didn't think was nearly as good as this one in its opening acts--so basically chalk it up to "The Disney Formula." Disappointing because for 30 or so minutes I was really digging this one.
A mild script doctor:
- Cut the romance; it felt comedically forced and out of place. They can still go back to the UK together as friends at the end.
- Cut the Germans. The film had one too many villains and the Germans could be cut without anyone noticing. They had effectively no role in advancing the plot.
- Honestly? I’d rather replace all of the villains, but given the batch that we had, I would have rather had the focus either be on the Zombie Conquistadors or (preferably) on a competing SEA expedition.
- The Rock twist was also unnecessary (as was the weird shift in tone from the associated flashback). I get how it adds to the lore, but I also feel as though it limits the character of Disney wanted this to ever become a franchise (which I’m starting to lean towards no on).
- The LGBT character (while the best Disney has done by far thanks to a really low bar) really could have used at least one more scene to reaffirm that (not just the token coming out scene that could be easily cut for China). Also, the fact that he was barely promoted with the film, when he was solidly the number 3 character of the film (yes there was a gap between him and the top 2, but also a gap between him and number 4) felt… odd.