Sequels are mostly unnecessary. One or two aside most of them are pointless. They are usually lazy, a rehash of former glory. Sequels made two decades after the original are especially pointless. But that doesn't mean they can't be someway fun.
Four teenagers (two nerds, the school jock and a selfie queen) for various reasons find themselves in detention in the basement of their school. While they are supposed to be cleaning they find an old games console and out of boredom plug it in to play it. Something magical happens and they find themselves sucked into the game's jungle setting. And inhabiting very different bodies. To escape and get home they must pool their strengths and beat the game.
Jumanji : Welcome To The Jungle is exactly what you'd expect it to be. Big loud silly fun. It will give you a few laughs, you'll be wowed by the special effects and you'll have it forgotten 3 hrs after you leave the cinema. It's pure candy floss. Some of it works though. Dwayne Johnson is great craic when he's in comedy mode and he's on form here. It's fun seeing him playing against type while at the same time doing exactly the things we expect of him. Fun Dwayne is way more watchable than the serious Dwayne of the Fast And Furious films. Bobby Cannavale makes a suitably menacing baddie and he'll make the more insect phobic members of the audience squirm in their chairs. Karen Gillan is good too as a wallflower who slowly comes out of her shell due to her new found powers and it's fun seeing her put those powers to use with a 90's soundtrack. The film makers have their cake and eat it too with her character. She spends the film in skimpy clothes because that's how female computer game characters, with very few exceptions, are depicted in games. It's a sneaky way of getting around complaints of sexism.
The makers of Jumanji owe the Uncharted series of games a huge debt of gratitude. Opening and closing bookends aside this film is an Uncharted game. Look at the picture above for example. The jungle setting. The exotic bazaar's heaving with people. The hints of mysticism. The climbing for jewels. The fist fights. Baddies on motorbikes. The cliff edge paths with certain death drops below. It would be borderline litigious if both the film and game weren't the property of Sony. If you are anyway into gaming you'll garner some enjoyment. Jokes are made about the tropes and cliches of gaming. Respawning. Skimpy pointless clothing. The backpack that can contain everything. An especially fun one is made about the limitations of non playable characters repeating their lines constantly. Oddly though for what is ostensibly a family film parts of it seem to be aimed at gamers in the 30-40 age range. For example when was the last modern game to offer characters a finite amount of lives? That went out with Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog. It has a whiff of a script that's been lying around for a long time that was given a modern polish.
A big bombastic film can be fun but it usually means spectacle at the expense of soul. There's no real bit of charm to this. There's no one to really care about. The original wasn't a classic by any means but it did have Robin Williams. An actor who could create empathy out of thin air. Actors like Jack Black and Kevin Harte can't do this. They are pretty terrible here. Black especially totally misses the mark and comes off like a bad 1970's joke. Harte is small and angry. Harte plays small and angry in everything. This stopped being funny a long time ago. The man needs a new schtick.
If you look closely you'll see the underlying story is about using your inner strength. What's inside matters more than the outside. How being a loner isn't good for you. But this is buried beneath layers of CGI, punch ups and and knob jokes. Yup. There's a surprising amount of those in a family film.
If you want to be entertained for 2 hours it's not bad but if you are looking for anything else you won't find it here. Maybe watch the original instead.
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