Mini Review - Jumanji

Soon, we’ll be looking at the movie I actually want to cover: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle but for the sake of completion, we’ll look at the original first. Based on the novel by Chris Van Allsberg, the movie was released in 1995 and was successful at the box office, earning $262m on its $65m budget. It’s also received some acclaim, being rated number 48 on Channel 4’s top family movies in 2005, but it’s reception on Rotten Tomatoes is a more mixed 53% with an average score of 5.7/10, audiences rated it a 62% with an average 3.2/5

Jumanji focuses on the life of Alan Parrish (Alan Hann-Byrd, later the late great Robin Williams) after being beaten up your generic 90's bullies, he finds a board game called, surprisingly, Jumanji. He takes it home and begins a game with his friend Sarah Whittle (Laura Bell Bundy, later Bonnie Hunt) but Jumanji is no ordinary game, it unleashes chaos onto the world with every turn, and with one, Alan is sucked into the game.

26 years later, We’re introduced to Peter and Judy (Bradley Pierce and Kirsten Dunce), they live with their Aunt Nora (Bebe Neuwirth) and have just moved into the old Parrish house. They rediscover the game and realise the only way to stop the madness is to complete it, which means bringing Alan and Sarah back into the game, and things get much, much crazier.

The problem I have with this movie is there are some dull stretches. In particular the moments between Alan’s disappearance and the kids rediscovering the game. This is supposed introduce us the children but what we find out is that Nora likes her drink, Peter has been silent since the death of their parents, a fact that’s undone before we even get to the board game and Judy is a serial liar… yeah, that goes nowhere at all.

There’s a moment where Nora apparently had to be summoned to their school on the first day for some reason but we don’t see why, what we see is Nora taking off some sheets, isn’t that exciting? The next dull stretch happens pretty much immediately after Alan’s return. I guess it’s not surprising what happens, I mean it makes sense that Alan would rather not play the game and needs to get to grips as to what the world’s become… that said, for what could easily have been a comedy goldmine, it’s played mostly straight, which is why it becomes dull as you’re waiting for the next turn.

Anything and everything involving Nora is dull. She spends the entire movie unaware of what’s actually going on and the fact her children are spending time with a couple of complete strangers. The problem here is that means she can play no active part in the plot, and she can’t straighten things out in the aftermath because of the reset button. There’s a lot of opportunity missed with her, in my opinion.

OK, enough with the negatives because what they do well, they do really well. The rampant craziness of everything going on is nicely. I like that there were some practical effects in amongst the CG, although you really have to feel sorry for Bradley Cooper having to sit in the makeup chair for that wolf transformation. Apparently, that was 2 and a half months of filming for him, yikes! The CG doesn’t exactly hold up but after 20 years, I didn’t expect it too. It still holds up better than a lot of old CG, so they can take comfort in that.

The performances are pretty strong all round the dialogue is pretty sold, it’s nicely shot and occasionally they have a good visual joke, like the Lion on the bed.

OK, there’s no getting around this one, Van Pelt, the hunter from Jumanji… as a service to Alan’s larger character arc, he was a bad choice. Not because he fell for traps ripped out of Home Alone, not because he was generically evil with no redeeming traits, but there is a small problem. Alan’s arc is about standing up to a bully, you don’t do that if the bully in question is armed, that’s not being brave, that’s being stupid or possibly suicidal. It’s a message that really hasn’t aged well.

When Jumanji hits its mark with chaos and horror, it does pretty well with some decent, though still aged, digital effects and the occasional practical one, the space between these events can often be quite dull as character traits are introduced then dropped with minimal resolution and the one character arc that does get focus has a rather unfortunate ending.

Rating 65/100