Director: Jake Kasdan
Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Duration: 119 minutes
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
In 1995 the first Jumanji movie was released, and even though not all reviews were positive, the movie took the world by storm, be it because of Robin Williams’ performance, the story about the board game from hell, or just the entire package. As is the trend nowadays in Hollywood, it’s all about reviving old popular franchises, with a remake, a reboot or a sequel. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is an original take on the original movie, and it doesn’t throw everything out of the window as it subtly mentions Robin Williams’ character, Alan Parrish somewhere in the movie. While we dived into this movie with fairly low expectations, we were pleasantly surprised on how things turned out for this one.
The plot of the movie is actually reasonably simple, as it’s all about four teenagers, who would never hang out with each other, who get sent to detention on the same day. You have the nerdy Spencer (Alex Wolff), the typical football jockey Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain), the quiet girl Martha (Morgan Turner) and the generic cheerleader type Bethany (Madison Iseman) who have to de-staple magazines to have them recycled. In this basement classroom they come across an old videogame console with the game ‘Jumanji’ inside. When booting up the device, the party is prompted to make a character selection choice, and hesitantly everyone decides to join in and try the game. Before they know it, they are transported within the game, and are now within the bodies of their avatar. Spencer has become the valiant dr. Smolder Braveston (Dwayne Johnson), Fridge now finds himself within the tiny confines of Moose Finbar (Kevin Hart), Bethany is trapped within the male body of professor Shelly Oberon (Jack Black) and last but not least, Martha is now in the smoldering hot body of Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan). They soon find out that they are trapped within the game until they complete the quest that is given to them, and it also seems that dying within the game is very much a possibility, as they only have three lives before they are wiped out from existence.
The flow of the movie is actually surprisingly spot on, safe for a bit of messing about in the midst of the storyline. The entire movie is filled with lighthearted content, lightening the direness of the situation the teens find themselves in. After a while it feels a bit as if the group is just doing random stuff, rather than following a fixed plot, which might throw you off for a short moment, but the movie recovers nicely and you’ll suddenly feel a sense of purpose again, and this makes the entire information/action ratio quite nice. Of course, the movie feels completely different than the first movie, where the action mostly happened outside the board game, rather than inside, but it’s still handled in a fun and original way.
Even though the teenage cast of the movie handles things quite nicely for the limited time they are in the limelight, it eventually becomes all about the in-game characters portrayed by Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Karen Gillan and after the movie reached the halfway point, Nick Jonas. It’s clear that this movie wasn’t a budget movie when looking at the stellar cast, be it the main characters or even the side-characters, which only get limited screen time. Overall the cast is decent, amusing and goes hand in hand with the original Jumanji movie, safe for the presence of the dearly missed Robin Williams.
In terms of extra features, the Blu-ray edition of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle does not disappoint. You’ll get snippets about the cast, the making of, the legacy of Jumanji, a music clip and a gag reel among other things. You’ll be able to lengthen your Jumanji experience a tad longer if you so desire. Also, the casing in which the Blu-ray comes is quite original (green), which will surely make it stand out in your existing movie collection.
Conclusion
If you can’t get over how ‘good’ the original movie was, and you can’t stand anything that steps away from the source material, then we can immediately tell you, you probably won’t like this new movie of Jumanji. If, however, you can make a proper distinction between the two movies, or never watched the original, then this movie is actually a fun adventure movie about a group of teenagers who are stuck in a game and have to find a way to get out. You’ll be treated to humor, adventure, a great cast and a fairly good story which prove to be a great combination for a fun movie night.
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