Disney's new Jungle Cruise movie is based on the popular ride found at Disney theme parks around the world. While the ride does take guests down some of the most famous rivers in the world to see (mechanical) wildlife, there's another reason that most people go on the ride again and again, the terrible terrible jokes. The Jungle Cruise skippers are known for their ability to sling one hilariously bad joke after another, and in the Jungle Cruise movie, as Skipper Frank, Dwayne Johnson certainly gets in his share of jokes. But it turns out that he filmed a lot more puns for the new movie, much to the chagrin of his co-star Emily Blunt.
I sat down with Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt just a few feet away from the Jungle Cruise attraction at Disneyland recently. And as a fan of the puns that Johnson's Skipper Frank delivers in the film, I was curious just how many of the classic attraction jokes he actually filmed. It turns out that Johnson, Blunt and Jack Whitehall spent most of a day together as Johnson simply filmed one bad joke after another. Check out Johnson's full response, and watch him hilariously try, and mostly fail, to deliver one of the jokes, in the video above.
Most of the jokes are delivered in a scene early in the film and Dwayne Johnson's Frank Wolff rattles off three or four of them as Jack Whitehall's character laughs and Emily Blunt's character groans. As it turns out, the characters were mostly accurate to the feelings of the actors, as Whitehall apparently loved the jokes-- while Blunt, really did not. Though The Rock loved that she hated the jokes so much, as he explained...
I had pages [of puns] and I would just be like ‘Ok, go.’ I would just say them. And the beauty of it is. When you have two people, when you’re delivering these puns, and we went on for hours. Jack Whitehall who loves them, and Emily who hates them. It brings me such joy, and when I know she hates it, the mustard I put on these puns. Right?
A normal ride on the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland lasts about seven or eight minutes. And while I do love the ride, I begin to wonder just how many times I could do it in a row before things got tired. And there are so many jokes available on the ride that you absolutely could ride it multiple times and never hear the same joke twice, with the exception of the "back side of water" of course. But still, as much fun as listening to Dwayne Johnson tell bad jokes sounds, doing it for 12 hours sounds equal parts amazing and exhausting.
Having said that, I'm certainly hopeful that when the Jungle Cruise Blu-ray comes out, it includes a lot of these alternate takes in the special features. Even if I need to take a few breaks I need to hear Dwayne Johnson deliver every one of those jokes. You can hear him deliver a few terrible jokes when Jungle Cruise arrives in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access on Friday.
