Jumanji (film series)

Roll the dice and unleash the excitement

JUMANJI (PG)

D: Joe Johnston

Columbia Tristar/Interscope (Scott Kroopf & William Teitler)

US 1995

104 mins

Adventure/Fantasy

W: Jonathan Hensleigh, Greg Taylor & Jim Strain [based on the book by Chris Van Allsburg]

DP: Thomas Ackerman

Ed: Robert Dalva

Mus: James Horner

PD: James Bissell

Robin Williams (Alan Parrish), Bonnie Hunt (Sarah Whittle), Kirsten Dunst (Judy Shepherd), Bradley Pierce (Peter Shepherd), Bebe Neuwirth (Nora Shepherd), Jonathan Hyde (Sam Parrish), David Alan Grier (Carl Bentley)

Two children play a mysterious board game that turns their living room into a jungle and invading animals cause all sorts of chaos around the neighbourhood.

Robin Williams saves the day as an expert on the game, stuck inside its fictional jungle world since his childhood.

For young children, this is perfectly entertaining and though it makes absolutely no sense, has enough about it for adults to also enjoy. The special effects vary from decent to unconvincing, the director choosing to have the beasties represented mostly by tacky CGI rather than animatronics which would have made the film far more immersive.

6/10

JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE (12)

D: Jake Kasdan

Sony/Columbia/Radar/Seven Bucks (Matt Tolmach & William Teitler)

US 2017

119 mins

Adventure/Fantasy

W: Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Scott Rosenberg & Jeff Pinkner [based on the book "Jumanji" by Chris Van Allsburg]

DP: Gyula Pados

Ed: Mark Helfrich & Steve Edwards

Mus: Henry Jackman

Dwayne Johnson (Smolder Bravestone), Jack Black (Shelly Oberon), Kevin Hart (Franklin 'Mouse' Finbar), Karen Gillan (Ruby Roundhouse), Alex Wolff (Spencer Gilpin), Madison Iseman (Bethany Walker), Ser'Darius Blain (Anthony 'Fridge' Johnson), Morgan Turner (Martha Kaply), Nick Jonas (Jefferson 'Seaplane' McDonough)

As someone who wasn't a huge fan of the 1995 film Jumanji, I wasn't as up in arms as some people were when the news leaked that the adventure would get the 21st century treatment.

This is neither a sequel or remake to the original film, but rather a reboot for the Snapchat generation, who wouldn't have been born when the 1995 film was released. It doesn't continue the story and it doesn't really recycle the same plot device. Instead, it places a group of schoolkids within the environment of a computer game, where the take on the appearance and characteristics of their avatars and need to win the game in order to escape.

The transition of the game from board format to game console is written in quite a lazy way, as is the Breakfast Club set-up where the group of mismatched students discover the game whilst undertaking their punishment. It's in the environment of the game where the fun starts, with a geek taking on the appearance of Dwayne Johnson, the jock becoming the wimpy Kevin Hart, the teen princess finding herself in the body of Jack Black and the shy girl stealing the show as the Lara Croft-esque Ruby Roundhouse.

Better writing could have made this a much better film, but it's still perfectly enjoyable, even though it doesn't have any real ties to the original film or Chris Van Allsburg's book. It honestly could have just been called "Welcome To The Jungle", but Hollywood Studios don't like to gamble, and thus had to have some nostalgia tagged to it in order to make it more successful.

6/10

JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL (12)

D: Jake Kasdan

Sony/Columbia/Hartbeat/Seven Bucks/The Detective Agency (Dwayne Johnson, Dany Garcia, Hiram Garcia, Matt Tolmach, William Teitler & Jake Kasdan)

USA 2019

123 mins

Adventure/Fantasy

W: Jake Kasdan, Jeff Pinkner & Scott Rosenberg [based on characters created by Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Scott Rosenberg & Jeff Pinkner; and the book "Jumanji" by Chris van Allsburg]

DP: Gyula Pados

Ed: Steve Edwards

Mus: Henry Jackman

Dwayne Johnson (Dr. Smolder Bravestone), Jack Black (Prof. Shelly Oberon), Kevin Hart (Franklin 'Mouse' Finbar), Karen Gillan (Ruby Roundhouse), Awkwafina (Ming Fleetfoot), Alex Wolff (Spencer Gilpin), Danny DeVito (Eddie Gilpin), Danny Glover (Milo Walker)

When Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle was released in 2017, there were many, myself included, who thought this was nothing more than a cynical cash-in following the death of the late, great Robin Williams. However, as I mention in my review above, Welcome To The Jungle put its own spin on the adventure, adapting it for a modern audience, rather than trying to bottle the magic.

Unfortunately, this 2019 sequel tries to do just that, cashing in on the success Sony had with the 2017 film, which just happened to be there biggest box office success ever.

This is just a retread of the 2017 film, except the jungle setting is replaced with sweltering deserts and snow-topped mountains, as the same characters make their return with a couple of additions and tweaks.

The set up here also seemed quite lazy, since the adolescent characters from the 2017 movie had satisfying character arcs in that film, only for this to set up that Spencer's character has gone back to square one and decides to revisit the game so he can have courage again. His friends follow him in, but a malfunction sweeps Spencer's cranky grandfather and his eccentric friend into the game as well, which does provide some amusing moments with Dwayne Johnson & Kevin Hart aping Danny DeVito & Danny Glover's mannerisms, but this does get a bit tiresome after a while.

The film is reasonably entertaining, but it's quite irritating at the same time, and it's only in the final act (when the right people are in the right avatars) that it becomes less so.

Overall, it makes for a good family film, but I still think this is a rushed, blatantly contrived cash-grab and a much better story could have been formulated if the filmmaker's sat on it for a while. The 9 year old me would have liked this a whole lot more.

6/10