When I saw the trailer for the new Jumanji movie I made a promise to myself that I would never watch it. The world doesn’t need more pointless money grab sequels. Most importantly, I’m not a big Kevin Hart fan. He’s great in small doses but his frantic squawking gets old after watching him do it for an hour and a half. I didn’t enjoy watching him and The Rock in Central Intelligence, or that other one with Ice Cube, so I figured this would be more of the same. I ran out of movies to watch on my pirate box…cough cough…I mean, the movie theater, and wound up watching Jumanji anyway.
I gotta say, it was actually a pretty damn good movie. It starts out like The Breakfast Club. We have four stereotypical high school kids; the nerd, the football star, the popular pretty girl, and the not popular smart girl. For various reasons they all wind up in detention and are forced to spend the day cleaning out some decrepit basement at the school; where they find an old video game system. The game magically sends them to the world of Jumanji where they have been transformed into video game characters. They all still have their own personalities but they also possess the strengths and weaknesses of their game characters.
The nerd turns into The Rock, who is a badass.
The football star turns into Kevin Hart, who is the sidekick whose only strength is carrying a backpack for The Rock.
The popular girl turns into Jack Black, who is a scientist.
The nerdy girl turns into Karen Gillian, who is an ass kicker.
The cast does an awesome job of portraying their alternate selves in their new bodies, except Kevin Hart, who just plays Kevin Hart. Jack Black stole every scene he was in, playing a self-absorbed pretty girl. Jumanji is obviously geared towards kids and uses pretty much every fish out of water, coming of age, kid trope and stereotype. The thing I really liked about Jumanj was, they didn’t hammer in the whole touchy feely “You’re perfect the way you are and you shouldn’t have to change” bullshit that movies have been cramming down children’s throats for the last twenty years that has resulted in a generation of mediocre crybabies. Instead, the overall message was, “its ok to acknowledge your weaknesses. You can overcome them, and in the meantime, work with your strengths.” I also really liked that the characters were stereotypes, but only enough to be familiar to the audience. Instead of being cardboard cutouts they all had a refreshing amount of depth to them. There was a great scene where the pretty girl calls out the nerdy girl for pushing people away because she is insecure about herself and then talks about how lonely it is being pretty because nobody really cares about her, just her looks. It was poignant without being preachy.
I think the thing that resonated with people in the first Jumanji was that it was a kid’s movie on the surface but it was actually pretty fucking dark. Thankfully, the writers of Jumanji: Welcome to the jungle recognized what made the first one great and didn’t dumb it down for the sequel. The kids are constantly aware that they could die inside the game…brutally. Kudos to the writers for having enough faith in their young audience to handle heavy themes…like fucking dying.
Another thing I liked about Jumanji 2 is they didn’t try to give any backstory or explanation to why the hell Jumanji exists. It’s a game, you get sucked in, you can die. We got it, that’s all we need. Don’t fuck up a perfectly good premise trying to explain everything.
Nick Jonas pops up half way through the movie as a kid who has been trapped in the game for twenty years. For some reason, I feel a kind of grumpy old bastard obligation to hate the Jonas Brothers, but I gotta give Nick credit. That boy can act. I can’t really hate the guy for being a good role model.
The comedy was good. The pacing was fast, but not rushed. The writing was solid. The special effects were better than the first movie by a longshot. The Mad Goat gives Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle an enthusiastic four hooves up!
If you liked this movie review check out some of my other ones.