Score: 4 / 5
"Who plays board games anymore?"
That's a question that might strike at some of our hearts but carries some weight in an age when video games are free on phones, fabulously creative, dangerously addictive, and totally immersive. The cursed Jumanji game comes to understand its own irrelevance in the first scene of this new movie, and it changes overnight into a video game. Rather than unleashing exotic animals and weather patterns into the real world, however, this incarnation of the game sucks its players into its not-so-virtual world. That's what it did to Alan Parrish (Robin Williams) as a result of bad luck some thirty years prior, and that's what it does again as a default setting.
Once in the game, the rules are slightly different than before, and so is the format. Playing off video game conventions, the filmmakers here stress specific levels of the game -- indicated by ominous drumbeats echoing through the jungle -- as well as the unique skills and abilities of the players. Of those, we have four of central concern, kids caught up in detention. Their avatars in the game are decidedly unlike themselves, and as the film progresses they learn the values of teamwork, sacrifice, perseverance, problem solving, and owning their respective identities. It's a fun family movie that is at once more fun and more intelligent than it had any right to be.
The leads show off their pitch-perfect comedic timing, playing off each other with crackling wit. Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, and Karen Gillan are all a delight, Nick Jonas pops in for some hilarious studly scenes, and even Bobby Cannavale makes a bizarre appearance as the buggy big baddie. None hold a candle, though, to Jack Black, whose character is easily the most enjoyable part of the film. He plays a teenage girl obsessed with her phone and virtual following, and his scene of learning to pee as a man is the stuff of comic genius.
It doesn't always feel like a sequel to Jumanji, at least not to those of us raised on the earlier film. But mad props to these filmmakers who did something nobody really wanted and made it absolutely entertaining. It's not a great film, to be sure, but who would expect it to be? It's fun, and sans Robin Williams, that's an admirable goal to have achieved.
One does begin to wonder, though, with that subtitle of Welcome to the Jungle, if there will be more installments of this unexpected franchise. Or if it was just an excuse to rock out to the song during the credits.
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