There is a vast difference between remakes, reboots and stand-alone sequels. When Sony had announced in 2015 that another "Jumanji" movie was coming to theaters, a lot of people had assumed it was a remake without any detail regarding the newly-announced project. The Joe Johnston-directed movie from 1995, based on the Chris Van Allsburg children’s book of the same, has a strong appreciation from kids born in the ‘90s and admirers of the late Robin Williams. While I can’t say I don’t enjoy "Jumanji" from a fun family movie standpoint, it doesn’t click with my childhood like other Robin Williams movies. I definitely wasn’t fond of another "Jumanji" movie being made, it had my curiosity for sure.
With "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" set twenty years after it’s predecessor, four high school students are sent to detention and stumble across "Jumanji", but in the form of an old-school video game. Upon selecting the in-game characters, the students get transported into Jumanji and discover themselves in the bodies of their chosen avatars: Dr. Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), Professor Shelly Oberon (Jack Black), Mouse Finbar (Kevin Hart) and Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan) - and must complete each level in order to get out of the game safely.
A lot of audience members are going to groan and moan, prior to seeing this newest "Jumanji" because of the nostalgic factor they have towards the original. The marketing for this was an absolute joke, but I love everyone in the cast and I was hopeful regarding that situation.
While "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" wasn’t anything close to a masterpiece, it was far from being a disaster. For starters, everyone in the cast does a great job and the four leads work off each other very well with remarkable chemistry. Jack Black is the film’s stand-out and for his character being different from any other role Black has graced audiences with, he portrays an overweight middle-aged man that has a teenage girl’s personality inside of his body.
Dwayne Johnson’s character is also different from the tough-minded heroes he’s shown us in action franchises. Karen Gillan and Kevin Hart both do good jobs in their respective roles, but Hart’s character felt like every other Kevin Hart-portrayed character with criticizing his short height and adding on his non-stop loud screaming. I also admired the pace of the second act, which was high-octane and thoroughly entertaining. Director Jake Kasdan does solid work with the action sequences, but his presence with the excessively noticeable CGI - not so much.
There are several plot-holes in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" that weren’t fleshed out properly and the storyline surrounding Nick Jonas’ character did not feel necessary. Without spoiling anything, it felt forced and wasn’t executed in a way that made me care about his character, as well as his purpose. The movie has some sequences involving meta when it comes to how video games are cut together, but at certain points - the movie would cut to Bobby Cannavale’s agonizing, mediocre-written antagonist and toss away the brilliantly-handled meta that Kasdan and his team of writers began with after our heroes entered "Jumanji".
The movie also suffers from a long running time of almost two hours, as this would’ve done better if it ran a half-hour shorter. The comedy too, at times, didn’t click with me, but it definitely did so more than Kasdan’s last directorial effort about Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel stopping a certain kind of tape from floating around.
In the end, "Jumanji" Welcome to the Jungle" wasn’t anything remarkable, but it wasn’t on the reins of a disaster like I thought it could’ve been. The positive news is that Dwayne Johnson didn’t go downhill after Baywatch and his chemistry with Kevin Hart, following "Central Intelligence", is still pretty strong.
Each of the actors, even Cannavale, look like they are having fun with the material they were given and even though this may aggravate fans of the Robin Williams-starring "Jumanji", it was nice for this one to stand on its own separately from the original. There’s a touching tribute to Williams thrown somewhere in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" and I think families will have fun watching this movie over the stacked movie season we have this holiday.
