Runtime: 1 hour, 59 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Jake Kasdan
Quick Impressions:
If I’m ever hired to teach a film class (which seems unlikely given that I’m spectacularly unqualified), I plan to begin the course by imparting this gem of celluloid wisdom. Want to know the surefire way to guarantee your movie will be a crowd-pleaser? Put The Rock in it.
Dwayne Johnson improves any movie. Everyone knows this. That’s why when a franchise makes a lackluster debut, the second installment usually scraps the original lead and always adds Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to the mix.
If I were kidding, you’d laugh (because I put The Rock in my joke). But actually, I’m serious. If you’re a fan of G.I. Joe, The Fast and the Furious, or Journey to the Center of the Earth, then you know what I mean already. Lately, any time test audiences seem on the fence about a trailer for a new action film, the movie voice quickly adds, “And also, The Rock’s in it now.” (Or, at least, that’s how it happens in my imagination.) It’s like studios just want to hedge their bets by letting Dwayne Johnson helm every major action release. If the actual fan backlash against The Last Jedi proves to be as bad as the online comments suggest (unlikely), then we can probably expect to see The Rock playing the new leader of the Resistance in Episode IX.
And from what I can see, this Rock-heavy strategy seems to be working. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is clearly the film that answers the question, “What would happen if you put The Rock in The Breakfast Club?”
Of course, setting The Rock aside, the movie also answers other questions.
What would happen if you were trapped inside a video game? What would happen if Jack Black played a sixteen-year-old girl? What would happen if you had multiple lives available to study your strengths and weaknesses?
Watching these experiments unfold on the screen is a pretty good way to spend two hours. Jumanji is that elusive holiday game that everyone in the family actually enjoys.
The Good:
My family loved this movie. We’re pretty avid gamers. (Well at least my husband and son are avid gamers. My daughter and I are mainly along for the theming. I mean, we play, too, but they’re the ones who could actually entertain people as Twitch casters–unless you consider me blurting out hysterical profanity as I accidentally throw my sword instead of a bomb in the heat of battle while playing Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild entertaining. My kids find it hilarious, but I get the feeling strangers might quickly grow annoyed.)
At this late date of course, the concept of having an adventure inside a video game is hardly novel, but Jumanji does it exceptionally well since the world inside the virtual jungle feels exactly like the type of video game players would encounter in 2017. The more familiar with recent games you are, the more you’ll find to enjoy here.
My absolute favorite aspect is the way the NPCs behave during conversations. Rhys Darby is quite funny, but possibly the highlight of the movie for me is Rohan Chand playing a young NPC they encounter at the bazaar. His intensely blank stare when spoken to by anyone but Dr. Bravestone is so perfect it’s borderline creepy.
I also liked the way the movie handles video game deaths, and the implication that Jumanji adapts itself to any user it wishes to ensnare. That’s delightfully sinister. (I’d love to see version set in the distant past.)
But there’s more to enjoy than just the video game elements. Just after the movie, my stepson mentioned that Jumanji works so well because each of the four stars has such a different style of humor.
Jack Black has the funniest part and gets the most laughs by not appearing to go for them. He plays the role of Bethany as if he really is a selfie-obsessed sixteen-year-old girl, bringing an earnestness and warmth to the character instead of acting like he’s part of some big joke.
Kevin Hart’s humor is fast and frantic and works well in an ensemble. I actually find Hart funnier here than in most of his other cinematic projects I’ve seen. (According to my fifteen-year-old, his type of humor is most like mine, and I’d bet our Zelda playing styles are pretty similar, too.)
Dwayne Johnson’s jokes are all subtle and calm. Most rely on his, “I’m handsome and cool, so if I smile and chuckle, you should laugh, too!” vibe. Once again, he gets laughs with his “smolder,” a joke he has used before in (many) other films. Still works, though.
Start to finish, the movie has a lot of energy. It consistently engages viewers and makes them smile. A few scattered moments generated big laughs from our theater audience, but most of the time you grin and chuckle and enjoy the action or amusingly awkward interactions as the adventure unfolds. People who found the most recent Star Wars exhausting would probably like Jumanji better since it’s all very straightforward and rollicking, never cerebral or taxing in any way.
That’s not to say Jumanji never offers any food for thought. It’s interesting to see how spending time in a different body affects the teenage protagonists. It’s predictable that looking like The Rock might give Spencer a shot of self confidence, but some of the results of this experiment are more surprising.
As the story neared its close, I thought, “And Bethany learned to be less selfish.” But then I paused and wondered, “Wait a minute, was Bethany ever actually selfish, really?” In the first fifteen minutes of the film, tons of people berate Bethany for being selfish and self-absorbed, but thinking it over, I see very little actual evidence that she’s any more selfish and self-absorbed than any other teenager. I think she was, perhaps, always a caring, thoughtful, and giving person, and, perhaps again, when she was no longer a glamorous young blonde girl, the others were less blinded to her true nature. If she actually is as initially selfish as everyone seems to believe, then she sure snaps out of it awfully fast because in game she starts making helpful contributions almost right away. (She’s flustered at the beginning, sure, but look at what happens to her early on. That would shake up anyone.)
So this movie actually offers up a lot of food for thought, but that’s all ancillary to the action. The plot is totally straightforward. The characters are more complex than they initially appear.
And before I forget, here are a couple of fun facts about director Jake Kasdan. At one point in the movie, Colin Hanks randomly shows up. He’s pretty easy to recognize. I mean, he looks just like himself and a good bit like his dad, too. So there’s really no mistaking that it’s him. But then his name didn’t appear in the credits. When I checked imdb in the car, it listed several actors as uncredited–but not Colin Hanks. I found this all extremely weird and mentioned it to my parents and sister and her boyfriend as they departed for their showtime. (Because of my two-year-old, we had to go in shifts.) Later that night, my sister’s boyfriend, in his words “played a little Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” and found out what was going on. Director Jake Kasdan’s first movie was Orange County, starring Jack Black and Colin Hanks, so surely Hanks’s uncredited appearance is meant as a little Easter egg for fans.
After hearing that, I realized, “Wait a minute, Jake KASDAN?” That’s right, Jumanji‘s director is Lawrence “Empire Strikes Back” Kasdan’s son. So it’s like Kasdan vs. Kasdan at the box office right now. (Sure Lawrence Kasdan didn’t write The Last Jedi, but still, the Kasdans have got to be feeling pretty good about their family accomplishments this Christmas.)
Jumanji also finds a nice way to work in a nod to its 1995 predecessor, a sound method of paying homage to Robin Williams since a cameo is impossible. (I fondly remember how my late grandmother refused to believe Robin Williams was Alan Parrish, the little boy who went into the game because “that couldn’t be.” The zoo animals running amok through town she had no problem with, apparently. But a little boy getting sucked into a board game and emerging at Robin Williams? That couldn’t be.)
Nick Jonas and Bobby Cannavale are also good in supporting roles.
Best Scene:
Jumanji makes great use of the fact that each player gets three lives to work with. Finally, only one player has an extra life left. Pay attention. The way that extra life is used is the film’s most exhilarating moment.
Best Action Sequence:
I loved the dance fighting. It killed me. I died.
One thing the film does exceptionally well is incorporate each of the characters’ (often bizarre) special skills and weaknesses in a way that specifically enhances the story. We get the idea very quickly and begin to anticipate how each new strength or weakness will come into play.
Best Scene Visually:
The whole movie looks pretty good, but no one image really stood out to me–unless you count that kiss or (even better) Martha’s efforts to use feminine wiles to distract the guards. And the bugs are gross, definitely disturbing.
Funniest Scene:
That scene with Jack Black’s Bethany learning to use some of her new equipment in the jungle made the entire theater laugh out loud. It could easily have become obnoxious. In fact, it is obnoxious, but Jack Black makes it all so funny, anyway. (Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson help, too.)
The Negatives:
Thinking up a compelling scene visually took me so long that I suspect cinematography may have been one of the weaker elements in Jumanji. All of these amazing, unexpected things are happening to the characters, but we don’t see anything truly mind-blowing. I’m sure the helicopter and the snake look really cool in 3D, but in The Last Jedi, say, so many amazing and novel images stood out to me. Nothing really stands out here. Everything looks okay. There’s just nothing too innovative in how things are shown to us.
I suppose that’s one (minor) flaw with the whole movie. It’s consistently good. But it’s not really trying to be great. Is that a flaw, though? When you don’t do anything risky, or weird, or extreme, then you’re more likely to end up with what we have here, a crowd pleasing holiday film that everybody likes.
Overall:
Our kids really want to see Jumanji again. Maybe we will. It certainly delivers lots of fun and adventure for the whole family. And it is a stronger film overall than the original Jumanji, that film’s excellent cast notwithstanding.