Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
Dir: Jake Kasdan
2017
***
I have to be honest, I never thought 1995’s Jumanji ever deserved the hype it received. I’m puzzled by the fact that it is now considered something of a modern classic by people in their twenties and early thirties. I admit I first saw it well after 95’ but that was mainly because it never appealed to me. I remember the trailer well, and I’ll watch anything with the great Robin Williams in, but I remember seeing the special effects and thinking Jurassic Park looked so much better and that was already two years old by the time Jumanji had even made it to the big screen. So I have no idea whether real fans ever wanted a sequel or not, and if so, would they want one without the great Robin Williams? I certainly didn’t rush to the cinema for this one, I picked it up on DVD because I like Dwayne Johnson. The Rock has this amazing ability of making terrible films watchable because he’s just so darn likable. I also like Jack Black, Kevin Hart and Karen Gillan, I didn’t know Bobby Cannavale was in it but was pleased as punch when I saw he had a leading role and a deliciously villainous one at that. Cannavale is a really underappreciated actor, how he has never played the main villain in a film before is beyond me. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle isn’t that close to the original film but that’s probably not such a bad thing. It is however, very similar to some other popular films, genuine classics such as The Breakfast Club, Vice-Versa and Stay Tuned (and before anyone comments – yes, Stay Tuned is a genuine classic). The film also shared ideas seen in Wreck-It Ralph, The Lawnmower Man, Tron, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World…to name but a few. It’s also like any other (every other) film about Jungle exploration. What it lacks in originality it makes up for with charm. It’s really nothing special at all but there is something extremely watchable about a group of friends (the actors) having fun on camera. The actors are clearly having the time of their lives, and while Jack Black and Kevin Hart are the comedians, it is Dwayne Johnson who gets all of the big laughs. As silly as the film is though, it does work remarkably well in respect to its predecessor. The story starts with the discovery of the Jumanji board washed up on a beach in 1996. Robin Williams’s Alan Parrish threw it over a bridge at the end of the first film to get rid of it once and for all but it seems someone found it almost right away. The man who finds it gives it to his teenage son but, being 1996, his son Alex is far more interested in video games and casts the board aside. The board however, has its own sense of intuition and it wants to be played, so over night it transforms into a video game cartridge which catches Alex's attention when he is awakened by the Jumanji drums and he is suddenly transported into the game. Cut to 2016 – twenty years into the future – we see that Alex’s house now resembles a haunted house and his parents are still grief-stricken from the loss of their son. We meet four separate high-school kids in and about their day to day routines. Spencer is the nerd, Anthony (known as ‘The Fridge’) is the football-playing jock, Bethany is the Instagram brat and Martha is the awkward outsider (the Ally Sheedy/Allison Reynolds of the group). Spencer is caught doing Anthony’s homework for him, Bethany makes phone calls in class and Martha refuses to do gym and all four of them find themselves in detention. They are sent to the school basement to prepare magazines for recycling and to think about their future. Fridge discovers Alex's discarded video-game system, how the games system found its way to the school basement is unclear but it doesn’t seem to matter at the time, the two boys start the machine. Although the game has five playable characters, the first one cannot be selected. Spencer and Fridge choose two characters, and the girls choose their own. When Spencer presses "Start", they are magically transported into the game. They find themselves falling through the sky and landing in a jungle. They soon discover they have arrived in the forms of their game avatars. Spencer is tough, muscular explorer and archaeologist Smolder Bravestone (Johnson; Fridge is diminutive zoologist Franklin "Mouse" Finbar (Hart), whom he chose after misreading "Mouse" as "Moose"; Bethany is chubby male cartographer and intellectual Sheldon "Shelly" Oberon (whose nickname she mistook for a woman's – played by Black), and Martha is beautiful commando and martial arts expert Ruby Roundhouse (Gillan). After Bethany/ Sheldon is eaten by a hippopotamus, they discover that they each have three lives - Spencer later deduces that if they lose all three, they die in real life. They learn the game's story from NPC Nigel (a criminally underused Rhys Darby). The corrupt archaeologist Russel Van Pelt (Cannavale) stole the magical Jaguar's Eye jewel from its shrine, cursing Jumanji. Nigel escaped Van Pelt with the jewel, and the players must return it to a jaguar statue and call "Jumanji" to lift the curse. Nigel warns them that Van Pelt will stop at nothing to retrieve the jewel, which gives him control of Jumanji's animals. They begin tackling the game's increasingly-difficult "levels", losing lives as they do so. The four are rescued by Alex (the missing fifth player, whose avatar is pilot Jefferson "Seaplane" McDonough). Taking shelter in a jungle house built by Alan Parrish (Robin Williams’s character in the first film), Alex believes that he has been in the game for a few months and is distressed to learn that it is really twenty years. The newcomers vow to help him return home – which they of course do. It’s mostly good fun but with a few scenes that could and should have been more thought-out. Each character has strengths and weaknesses for example – Kevin Hart’s character’s weakness is cake – which he of course eats and subsequently explodes. Not particularly funny and about as lazy and dumb as a script can be. In another rather harsh but never-mentioned-again scene, one of the characters kills the other on purpose, an act with huge implications that is merrily skipped over within a few short minutes. It seems ridiculous to point out plot holes in silly sci-fi films so I won’t but a lot of the story makes no sense. The script is lazy and a bit too simple and I can’t say I was impressed – the film’s charm comes from the actors, and not just the four big stars. The child actors are also very good, although Ser'Darius Blain – who plays Anthony ‘The Fridge’ was actually thirty years old at the time. It’s fun, a bit of fluff. The first film was fun, no classic, but just a bit of mindless and charming fun, so really Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is the perfect sequel, as it is very much the same.