The Mystery of Valverde by Malik Bentali and Ludovic Colbeau-Justin

At the box office is the adventure comedy by Malik Bentali and Ludovic Colbeau-Justin Jungle Cruise: The Mystery of Valverde. Mikhail Trofimenkov it seemed that the French pastiche films in the genre of “Indiana Jones” were shot not quite by people.

There is so much talk about the advent of the era of neural networks capable of generating quite articulate texts that it’s time for readers-viewers to fall into paranoia and master the skills of a futuristic detective from Blade Runner, exposing androids who are just like people, only they don’t dream of electric sheep And they don’t seem to be able to love.

The “androids” from neural networks somehow do not get along with the imagination, so they cannot cope with the main trouble of modern cinema – the crisis of imagination. A colossal working memory, from which one can draw plots, images, stylistic turns, yes. But to revive, to humanize this dead weight is not.

Suppose that some neural network is assigned to write a story about the adventures of a handful of reluctant heroes on a tropical island. What will she get? Exactly what Bentali and Colbeau-Justin did. The trouble is not that the neural network synthesizes genre stereotypes, but that it conscientiously synthesizes all stereotypes at once.

The mythology of the islands is associated with pirate treasures. So, on the island of Valverde, the pirate Labuse hid the priceless sword of the Indian Maharaja, who managed to shout a cipher indicating the location of the hiding place with a noose around his neck. The four heroes involved in the search for the sword will not escape any predictable misfortune. Plane crash. Attacks of tigers, tarantulas and snakes. Jumping into the waterfall as the only chance for salvation. Quicksands. The collapse of an ephemeral bridge over a stormy river. A duel with the main villain on swords. Cache with a secret entrance.

All this is too much, all this is too hastily rammed into the script, we have already seen all this somewhere, and more than once. The neural network does not know how to logically connect all this into a coherent story. And the budget is not rubber: all the tropical splendor seems to be filmed in the nearest botanical garden.

It is not easy for a machine to generate characters that are nothing more than those indicated in the film. Jack Mumun (Bentali), the host of an extreme TV show, a bon vivant, forced against his will to survive and be a hero in earnest, takes the rap for touching comedy. Aurelie (Josephine Jaly) is the girl who lured Jack to the island: there is nothing more to say about her. She seems to be responsible for the romance in the film, but any sequoia with Valverde is a thousand times sexier than her. Why Bruno (Jerome Commander), Jack’s manager, is needed, it is impossible to explain. Just for the sake of getting under the feet of satellites and asking the heavens, why is he being punished like that? Well, even without him, the three heroes yell so deafeningly, rush so fussily through the forest and fall into all the traps so diligently that one of them is more, one is less – there is no difference.

The only one with personality is Jean-Marc (Francois Damien), Aurélie’s bodyguard. Moreover, he is the most functional of the screen cranks. Muscular, talkative brute of those who first shoot, and then check the documents. But it is he who is not only funny, but also brings the breath of a completely non-comic reality. Jean-Marc embodies all the “traditional values” that have no place in the beautiful, new, correct world.

In response to a specific and urgent question, he dreamily gives out in response to a specific and urgent question, how to get out of another scrape, that “family is dad and mom”: he thought about the innermost, but it fell off his tongue. Just as unexpectedly, it suddenly denounces the world behind the scenes, armed with Pfizer and electronic chips. Setting an example of returning to the roots, he pulls mushrooms into his mouth, one look of which is capable of driving him into a coffin. Mushrooms will naturally turn out to be a kind of bacteriological weapon of mass destruction. In general, this macho steps on all possible “rakes” in the jungle.

And he is also a veteran of all the dirty wars that the world hypocritically does not notice – or (which does not change anything) a liar who believes in his military past: “I remember that in Liberia one pepper runs at me …”; “Don’t rob the cache, you say? yeah, right now: we did not leave the palace of Gaddafi empty-handed … “. He is so inappropriately full-blooded that it seems that the authors agree with him. But, not daring to admit it, they pretend to be “androids” and put the cherished into the mouth of an irresponsible clown.