Jungle Cruise (2021) | This Delightful Throwback Should Have Started A Franchise & Revitalized The Rock's Career | Behind The Scenes Of Jungle Cruise
1-Week Rental | Behind the Scenes Film AnalysisShow Notes
Hey folks, we had to postpone our Oppenheimer episode one week. We're busy at Los Alamos putting the final touches on a giant episode, so we just needed a little more time. Since we have a lot of new listeners who weren't with us last summer, we're re-posting the season finale to last summer's miniseries, The Summer of Rock, our podcast about the surprisingly fun movie Jungle Cruise starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt. We'll return in a week with a brand-new episode. See you then!
Original release description: This is the end, beautiful friends. We conclude the Summer of Rock with the much-better-than-I-remembered Jungle Cruise, a movie we abruptly pivoted to covering after trying to watch Black Adam and giving up out of boredom. We cover the history of movies based on theme parks, the rocky production of Jungle Cruise, its unfortunate failure at the box office, and then we go through the movie itself, trying to figure out if this is one of The Rock's better late-career performances or if he's being carried entirely by Emily Blunt. The Summer of Rock is our summer 2025 miniseries covering the movie career of Dwayne Johnson through nine movies, presented in chronological order. Starting with his attempt at crossing over from the world of wrestling, The Rock's career got off to a bumpy start before finally taking off in the 2010s. But it wasn't long before the bumps returned, and we'll be telling the story for you all summer long! Next week: We'll have a shorter bonus episode to wrap up the Summer of Rock, and we'll answer a few mailbag questions. Our next proper episode will be September 12, 2025, about FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992). Bonus video: Matt does a deep dive into Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, the 1989 English-language anime: https://youtu.be/nkFqlLFebn8
Time stamps: 00:02:59 — Wrapping up the Summer of Rock (sort of) 00:15:40 — General thoughts on Jungle Cruise 00:22:45 — History segment, part 1: The Jungle Cruise Disney theme park attraction and the craze of adapting theme park rides into movies 00:37:50 — History segment, part 2: the production and COVID-hampered release of Jungle Cruise; the production gets attention for featuring Disney's "first" "openly gay" character 00:58:40 — History segment, part 3: The Rock's movie career after Jungle Cruise: Red Notice, Black Adam, Red One, and The Smashing Machine 01:16:00 — Movie discussion + Jungle Cruise film analysis 02:10:50 — Star ratings + final review of Jungle Cruise
Sources: "Disney's 'Jungle Cruise' Movie Coming Out Scene with Gay Character ... But Avoids the Key Word" | TMZ (2018) - https://bit.ly/3UPda4W "Dwayne Johnson & Chris Evans' $200M+ Christmas Action Movie 'Red One' Opens To $34M: Is It A Bomb Or A Streamer's Rounding Error?" by Anthony D'Alessandro | Deadline (2024) - https://bit.ly/47R1iH9
Artwork by Laci Roth.
Music by Rural Route Nine. Listen to their album The Joy of Averages on Spotify (https://bit.ly/48WBtUa), Apple Music (https://bit.ly/3Q6kOVC), or YouTube (https://bit.ly/3MbU6tC).
Songs by Rural Route Nine in this episode: "Summer of Rock" - https://youtu.be/dvRY72jNIEE "Winston-Salem" - https://youtu.be/-acMutUf8IM "Snake Drama" - https://youtu.be/xrzz8_2Mqkg "The Bible Towers of Bluebonnet" - https://youtu.be/k7wlxTGGEIQ
"Summer of Rock" theme song credits: Words and music by Matt Stokes Engineered, mixed, and mastered by TJ Barends | Bare Sounds Personnel: TJ Barends - backing vocals Wade Hymel - drums/guitar/backing vocals Laci Roth - vocals Matt Stokes - vocals/guitar/bass
Follow Wade on Instagram: @wadealready Follow TJ on Instagram: @baresoundstwitaj
Follow 1-Week Rental, a movie podcast: Twitter: @1weekrental | @MattStokes9 | @LRothConcepts Facebook: @1weekrental Instagram: @1weekrental TikTok: @1weekrental | @mattstokes9 Letterboxd: @loadbearinglaci | @mattstokes9 Bluesky: @1weekrental.bsky.social
1-Week Rental used to be Load Bearing Beams.
More from 1-Week Rental | Behind the Scenes Film Analysis
Hey folks, 1-Shriek Rental is off today, and we'll return next week (Friday, Oct. 23, 2026) with an episode about Jordan Peele's 2019 doppelgänger horror/comedy Us.
This week on 1-Shriek Rental, Laci Elizabeth* Goth and Matt Chokes continue their examination of 2010s horror films by going through The Purge (2013). It's the best night of the year to buy and sell exotic reptiles. But what other crazy shenanigans happen in this movie? Well, it's mostly a home invasion story. But there's a reason for that! And we tell you all about it by going through the history of this movie and the larger franchise it spawned. Watch this The Purge podcast in full on YouTubE: https://youtu.be/UbMWku0pdAc We are taking next week off, and will return on Friday, October 23, 2026 with an episode about Jordan Peele's Us (2019)!
Welcome to 1-Shriek Rental, where your hosts Matt Chokes and Laci Elizabeth* Goth take you through horror films all through the month of October. And this October, Ms. Goth and Mr. Chokes are specifically taking a look at horror movies from the 2010s, starting first with 2015's word-of-mouth sensation It Follows. Writer/director David Robert Mitchell was inspired by recurring childhood dreams about being followed by an amorphous, slow threat. It's a deliciously simple idea: It moves slow, but it's never gonna stop moving toward you. It will be the thing that defines you, the thing you can never escape, the thing that will ruin your life and turn you into a bad person. And it's why we think this movie is actually a metaphor for getting a job. Watch this It Follows podcast in full on YouTube: https://youtu.be/48KBGjG8wzI Next week (Oct. 9, 2026): The Purge (2013)!
We travel back in time to the perfect year, 1995, when nothing at all was bad about the world. And it was in that year that you would have met a family unstuck from time, the Bradys, who are here to make sure you have nothing but sunshine days. You might remember The Brady Bunch Movie as a movie that sticks it to the cheesy old '70s sitcom, that injects double entendres and crass humor into those squeaky-clean Bradys, but you will be surprised to find that this is basically an update of the show that mostly keeps the wholesomeness and sweetness, and it works beautifully. The story can now be told! We take you through the history of Brady Bunch ephemera, the weird TV movies and spin-offs that eventually lead to The Brady Bunch Movie and A Very Brady Sequel in the 1990s. Then we take you through The Brady Bunch Movie itself, celebrating its neato blending of past and present and refreshing lack of world-building. Just imagine what a Brady Bunch movie would be like if it were made today. It'd be 2 hours and 45 minutes long, it'd take an hour for you to meet a single Brady, the horse statue would be beneath a dusty old sheet, etc. Watch this Brady Bunch Movie podcast in full on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@1weekrental Next week (Oct. 2, 2026): It Follows (2014)!
Cashing in on well-known intellectual properties is by no means a new thing in Hollywood. Look all the way back to 1985, when Clue opened to disappointing box office with a confusing marketing gimmick of having three different endings. You could go see Clue A, Clue B, or Clue C. This was a bad idea, but today, all three endings are included in the film and follow, one after the other, and it's beautiful. If all IP cash-grabs were as great as the Clue movie, we'd have no problem with them! A loving tribute to classic screwball comedies with a brilliant cast that perfectly matches the material, all of it anchored by an extraordinary performance by the late, great Tim Curry. In the history segment, we take you through the gestation of this movie, from original director John Landis to final director Jonathan Lynn (of My Cousin Vinny and The Whole Nine Yards), to the casting of Carrie Fisher as Miss Scarlet before her dropping out to go to rehab, to the misguided marketing strategy to the disappointing box office and critical performance, to Clue's rediscovery on home video. Then in the movie discussion, we struggle to explain and keep track of everything that happens in this movie, so we instead debate whether what happens in a movie matters, and what does it mean to matter anyway? Watch this Clue podcast in full on YouTube: https://youtu.be/g6g95ChsEWg Next week (Sept. 25, 2026): The Brady Bunch Movie (1995)!