In 2017 Jumanji : Welcome To The Jungle made 962 million dollars at the box office. It was clunky video game fun that cemented Dwayne Johnson as a massive star and made sure Kevin Hart became a chat show staple. The former was bound to happen eventually. The latter was an unforgivable crime against humanity.
Spencer (Alex Wolff), Martha (Morgan Turner), Bethany (Madison Iseman) and Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain) are home for the holidays. It's been a couple of years since they they were sucked into the Jumanji game and had the adventure of a lifetime. Time has moved on for everyone except Spencer. He's living in NYC but life is a massive disappointment. To combat the emptiness of his life he heads back into Jumanji and his friends have to go back to rescue him. This time Spencer's Grandad Eddie (Danny DeVito) and his friend Milo (Danny Glover) get dragged in too. But the extra players mess things up ingame and their usual avatars get jumbled around and grandad Eddie ends up in the body of Dr Smolder Bravestone (Johnson) while Milo ends up in Mouse Finbar (Hart) amongst other mix ups. What should be a straightforward experience has suddenly gotten very messy.
The first hour of this sequel is as crappy as crap can be be. It's a flat out repeat of the original film without any of it's surprises. The new characters and avatars make things unnecessarily confusing and the original film's weaknesses (computer game rules from the 90's, Kevin Hart, some truly awful CGI, not enough Rhys Darby) are carried over and for a while this looks like it's going to be a dead duck. But then slowly it lets itself start having some fun with it's concept, introduces an entertaining threat (Rory McCann, always menacing) and gives us Awkwafina, as new avatar Ming. Bland at first but a change in her personality turns her role into belly laugh central, that accent coming from that face will never not be a joy. She becomes the best thing about the film.
It's not hard in fairness. For all it's action and laughs this is big budget entertainment at it's most soulless. A cynical money making exercise carefully put together with just enough rude humour and scary action to thrill a family audience but not alienate them. An axe might fly at a head or a huge snake might attack but no one dies in a computer game. And it's not like you'll care anyway; at least with a comic book movie fans have a connection to the characters. Here we have a collection of mostly forgettable teenagers it's impossible to connect with. We don't get enough time with the real people because the film is in such a rush to get Dwayne and Kevin Hart front and centre. Hart does his thing (angry and small and desperately unfunny) and Johnson does his thing (big and punchy)and this will ensure the money rolling in.
I'd love to see a blockbuster take a risk for once. Something to make us gasp.Turning a character into a horse doesn't count tbh. Having Karen Gillan kick bad guys around the place to a Peter Frampton song isn't very groundbreaking (and a callback to the first film that feels unearned). You'll eventually have fun with this but you won't remember a thing about it 24 hours later. Except nunchuks. Nunchuks are always memorable.
In cinemas everywhere now.
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