The most glaring mistake in “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” is the title of the film and using the Guns-N-Roses song of the same name that thankfully is only played at the closing credits of the film. Calling this film a reboot it feels more like a sequel, I’d consider it a sequel, basically a board game is buried somewhere and people hear distant drum beats until the find the buried game, woe be to the person who starts playing because well movie stuff has to happen. The original movie was released in 1995 and had a great cast with headliner Robin Williams and then new-fangled CGI (computer generated image) effects of monkeys, rhino rampages and swirling vortexes. I really don’t remember much of the movie except that as a child Williams character vanishes into the board game and isn’t heard from for 20 years or so and when he returns he is Robin Williams but still has the mind of a child.
23 years later we now get a movie with very solid casting with Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, Jack Black and Bobby Cannavale as avatars. Four kids the bookish Spencer (Alex Wolff) super jock “Fridge”(Ser’darius Blain) the super attention seeking Bethany (Madison Iseman) and the pretty wallflower Martha (Morgan Turner) wait, the writers seriously named a millennial character Martha?!? Really? Ok anyhow Spencer, “Fridge”, Bethany and Martha are in detention tasked with removing staples from a room full of magazines until it is they are all stripped clean. Bored “Fridge” finds a video game consul with the titular cartridge still in the port Spencer plugs it in and the gang is transported to Hawaii where Spencer morphs into Dr. Smolder Bravestone (Johnson) “Fridge” is Franklin “Mouse” Finbar (Hart) Bethany is Professor Sheldon “Shelly” Oberon and Martha is Ruby Roundhouse (Gillian) Spencer being the video game enthusiast he is quickly figures things out and leads the gang to get them through the game. Nigel (Rhys Darby) is an NPC guide who gives the foursome the exposition needed as to what’s happening. Turns out Van Pelt (Cannavale) has found and taken the “Jaguar’s Eye” a macguffin of a jewel that whoever posses it has reign over all creepy crawly creatures and animals. The gang eventually find and take the jewel and in a weird turn Van Pelt still controls the animals, even though the rules clearly state anyway in order to get back home the Mystery Machine Crew must work together and put the jewel back in the eye socket of the statue of a…….rhino, I mean jaguar. There’s your plot, I’m really not giving anything away especially with the best sight gag of the movie involving Kevin Hart cake and exploding. The chemistry between the four leads is really good, Spencer and Fridge were friends growing up then “Fridge” hit a growth spurt and is as big as four start defensive end, who is probably getting recruited by division one schools, no one is mentioning it however he wear a gold “94” necklace and is the big man on campus, Spencer does Fridge’s homework because they both had to get to detention somehow. Meanwhile Martha and Bethany kind of sort of get along Bethany has some fun being a man and Black does get some of the better laughs and lines in the film. Cannavale is decent in his screen time as the heavy, I made the mistake of thinking that Van Pelt was the kid in the very beginning of the movie who got sucked into the video game turns out that was Alex (Nick Jonas) who thinks he’s been in the game for three months, but in reality he’s been stuck for 20 plus years. The special effects are good, the writing is better than I was expecting and the ending was somewhat satisfying, the only thing I would change is the title or just not use that particular Guns-N-Roses track, if that is the only thing wrong with the film, then it is worth your $8.00 for a ticket.
Take52 