Review: 'Jungle Cruise' turns the Disneyland ride into a serviceable action movie, though there's no spark between stars Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt.

If you can imagine Dwayne Johnson, the artist formerly known as The Rock, filling in for Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, you have a pretty solid idea of how Disney’s “Jungle Cruise” is going to go.

Again. Disney has retooled one of its Disneyland theme-park rides into a fun, if formulaic, action adventure with lots of stunts, creepy special effects, and the comic byplay between a roguish hero and a headstrong Englishwoman — though, unlike the 22 years between Depp and Keira Knightley, the nine-year gap between Johnson and co-star Emily Blunt isn’t quite so noticeable.

Blunt is introduced first in this tag-teamed script (five writers are credited), as noble adventurer Lily Houghton, bucking patriarchal convention in 1916 by procuring an arrowhead from a stuffy explorers’ organization. She’ll use that arrowhead in the Amazon, to find something called the Tears of the Moon, a tree that legend says produces flower petals that can cure all forms of sickness. 

Lily tells her effete brother MacGregor (played by comedian Jack Whitehall) she plans to find this magic tree, using the maps their late father once used, and use its powers to benefit mankind. On the other hand, the villain, Prince Joachim (Jesse Plemons), wants to use the arrowhead to find the tree and harness its powers to make the Kaiser’s Germany invincible.

Lily and MacGregor get to a small town along the Amazon, and hire the one boat pilot foolhardy enough to go up the Amazon and desperate enough to take their money. That’s Johnson’s character, Frank Wolff, who’s in hock to the local river-cruise overlord (Paul Giamatti) and scratches out a meager living by taking tourists along the river — setting up staged “thrills” and telling corny jokes, in homage to the original Disneyland ride.

After a few chases to elude Joachim’s goons in the river town, Lily, MacGregor and Frank are on their way up the river, where more thrills and spills await. So, too, does a 16th century conquistador (Edgar Ramirez) and his cohorts, trapped near the Amazon by an ancient curse — or by a surplus of computer-generated effects. Director Jaume Collet-Serra (whose resumé includes the Blake Lively shark thriller “The Shallows” and four Liam Neeson vehicles) keeps things moving briskly, with a fairly good balance of humor and awe-inspiring spectacle.

Separately, Johnson and Blunt are nicely cast. Johnson applies his WWE-grown charm to the gruff, rakish Frank, conceived as some combination of Harrison Ford’s two most iconic roles, Han Solo and Indiana Jones. And Blunt, certainly no damsel in distress, conveys Lily’s sense of adventure and her noble heart.

The problem with “Jungle Cruise,” though not a fatal one, is that the stars have zero chemistry, so the transition from reluctant partners to people who might actually have feelings for each other is unconvincing. Of course, Johnson is too clean-cut to approach a younger Depp’s scruffy Captain Jack charisma, and too earnest to pull off the Bogart to Blunt’s Katharine Hepburn in the moments when Collet-Saura and company are attempting some “African Queen” saltiness. The kids don’t want lovey-dovey stuff anyway, so they’ll be content with the fireworks the effects teams display in place of the sparks the leads don’t generate.

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‘Jungle Cruise’

★★★

Opens Friday, July 30, in theaters, and streaming on Disney+ Premier. Rated PG-13 for … Running time: 127 minutes.