WELCOME TO 2018
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
JUMANJI FILM REVIEW + EXTENDED TRAILER
But before we start with the review I wanted to say that in 2018 I will go more beyond the world of movies. I have a lot of specials prepared and a lot of magical moments will be created when I will talk about my hobby: Hollywood and the world of movies.
I cannot wait for the new stuff and to share it with you.
Kick off will be
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
Four teenagers are sucked into a magical video game,
and the only way they can escape is to work together to finish the
game.
Director:
Jake KasdanStars:
Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart
In a brand new Jumanji adventure, four high school kids discover an old
video game console and are drawn into the game's jungle setting,
literally becoming the adult avatars they chose. What they discover is
that you don't just play Jumanji - you must survive it. To beat the game
and return to the real world, they'll have to go on the most dangerous
adventure of their lives, discover what Alan Parrish left 20 years ago,
and change the way they think about themselves - or they'll be stuck in
the game forever, to be played by others without break. Written by
Sony Pictures
Country:
USALanguage:
EnglishRelease Date:
20 December 2017 (USA) See more »Also Known As:
Jumanji 2 See more »Edit
Box Office
Budget:
$90,000,000 (estimated)Opening Weekend USA:
$36,400,000, 24 December 2017, Wide ReleaseGross USA:
$185,755,967, 1 January 2018Cumulative Worldwide Gross:
$338,755,967, 1 January 2018Company Credits
Show more on
IMDbPro »
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Color:
ColorAspect Ratio:
2.39 : 1Trivia
James Newton Howard was originally announced as the film's composer, but had to leave due to schedule conflicts. See more »Goofs
Helicopters cannot maintain level flight while turned sideways, any pilot knows this and would never attempt such a move at low altitude while inside a canyon. See more »Crazy Credits
Near the end of the closing credits, Jumanji's drums can be heard beating. See more »Soundtracks
Baby I Love Your WayWritten by Peter Frampton
Performed by Big Mountain
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Records Inc.
By arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing
It’s hard to say whether “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” about a
group of teenagers who turn into videogame characters, is a sequel to
the 1995 Robin Williams hit “Jumanji,”
a remake, a reboot, or something else. But it’s definitely the kind of
movie that works the name of a classic rock song into its title and
makes sure to blast it during the end credits, so that people who were
in their twenties during the 1990s and now have kids of their own (and
probably took them to this film) can feel that Pavlovian tingle.
That description makes the new “Jumanji” sound like a cash-grab, and in lot of ways it is—studios are so enamored with the notion that pre-existing intellectual properties are box office insurance that they’re far more likely to greenlight this than something genuinely new, even though exactly no one has spent the last two decades saying, “I wish somebody would make another ‘Jumanji.’” At the same time, though, this is a likable, funny diversion, and sometimes more than that. It has enough twists and surprises to pull viewers along, despite the fact that writer-director Jake Kasdan’s story (co-written with four people) is ultimately not much meatier than the one from a 1990s videogame that the characters end up inhabiting after getting sentenced to a “Breakfast Club”-type detention at school. (In the original film, the titular diversion is an old-fashioned board game, just like in the source material, Chris van Allsburg’s popular children’s book.)
The protagonists here are Spencer (Alex Wolff), an earnest nerd; Spencer’s onetime best friend Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain), a football star who ends up grounded after authorities realize Alex wrote a homework assignment for him; Bethany (Madison Iseman), a classic snotty Heather-type who’s addicted to her smartphone and takes selfies constantly; and the bookish, socially anxious Martha (Morgan Turner). They all have insecurities and issues. Once they end up inside the Jumanji videogame, these same characters are played by Dwayne Johnson (as Spencer the nerd); Kevin Hart (as Fridge the jock); Karen Gillan (as the super-fit avatar of Martha), and Jack Black, of all people, as Bethany. There are supposed to be five characters in the game-space, though, and we meet the fifth in due time: Alex Vreeke (Nick Jonas), who is introduced as an energetic teenager in the film’s 1996 prologue, only to get sucked into the game and become The Local Missing Boy whose endlessly grieving family still lives in their now-decrepit house.
The body-switching gag threatens to wear out its welcome quickly (hah ha, the scrawny nerd looks like Dwayne Johnson now, and the awkward girl has washboard abs!), but the actors take their assignments to play teenagers so seriously that the film surfs along on a wave of poker-faced earnestness, mixing moments of pathos in with its super-broad slapstick. (Except for Dan Castellaneta’s Homer Simpson, nobody screams in pain more hilariously than Kevin Hart.) At certain points you might feel as though you’re watching the longest, most lavishly produced “Saturday Night Live” sketch ever, complete with lush jungle scenery (the film was shot partly on location in Hawaii) and attacks by CGI hippos, rhinos, monkeys, crocodiles and the like. But since the entire thing plays like a 10-year old’s Disney Channel fantasy of what adolescence will be like, it works well enough, especially when coupled with intense discussions of the game’s rules (how many lives you get, how many levels there are, how to lift the curse from the land, etc).
Both the videogame’s construction and its gender politics are very ‘90s. The movie is aware of this and makes fun of it, though there’s a bit of an eat-your-cake-and-have-it-too aspect to the way it puts Johnson and Gillan's bodies on display. There are occasional jolts of mayhem, thanks mainly to the motorcycle-riding ninjas who do the bidding of the movie’s villain John Van Pelt (Bobby Cannavale), a demonic figure who wants to control the Jaguar’s Eye and claim dominion over the land. The action scenes are constructed with a bit of panache and manage to be exciting though you’re never seriously worried that any major character is going to lose all of their lives. Kasdan, a veteran filmmaker who happens to be the son of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “The Empire Strikes Back” screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, has an old-school sense of how to build those kinds of sequences. The shots are thoughtfully composed, for the most part, and you always know where you are and what's at stake from moment to moment.
The script’s scenarios allow for charming, often faintly surreal funny character moments, as when Black’s round yet flouncy Bethany instructs Gillan’s super-fit but still physically awkward Martha on how to be sexy. Black’s "hey, sailor" walk evokes Bugs Bunny in drag, and Gillan’s subsequent “seductive” dance to distract some guards looks as if she’s trying to shake sand out of her shorts while simultaneously dealing with a bad case of swimmer’s ear. The film doesn’t have the nerve to follow some of its more subversive ideas (such as Bethany lusting after Alex) to their logical conclusions, probably because this is an expensive project that’s terrified of alienating a certain sector of the public (imagine the walkouts if Jack Black lip-locked with Nick Jonas in something other than a CPR situation). But it’s still more surprising in more ways than it had to be, and the performers are clearly having such fun playing insecure teenagers that you stay involved even when the thinness of the enterprise becomes undeniable. This is a two-and-a-half star movie, honestly, bumped up a notch because the actors are likable, the film doesn’t have a cruel thought in its head, and the sentimental finale feels earned.
That description makes the new “Jumanji” sound like a cash-grab, and in lot of ways it is—studios are so enamored with the notion that pre-existing intellectual properties are box office insurance that they’re far more likely to greenlight this than something genuinely new, even though exactly no one has spent the last two decades saying, “I wish somebody would make another ‘Jumanji.’” At the same time, though, this is a likable, funny diversion, and sometimes more than that. It has enough twists and surprises to pull viewers along, despite the fact that writer-director Jake Kasdan’s story (co-written with four people) is ultimately not much meatier than the one from a 1990s videogame that the characters end up inhabiting after getting sentenced to a “Breakfast Club”-type detention at school. (In the original film, the titular diversion is an old-fashioned board game, just like in the source material, Chris van Allsburg’s popular children’s book.)
The protagonists here are Spencer (Alex Wolff), an earnest nerd; Spencer’s onetime best friend Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain), a football star who ends up grounded after authorities realize Alex wrote a homework assignment for him; Bethany (Madison Iseman), a classic snotty Heather-type who’s addicted to her smartphone and takes selfies constantly; and the bookish, socially anxious Martha (Morgan Turner). They all have insecurities and issues. Once they end up inside the Jumanji videogame, these same characters are played by Dwayne Johnson (as Spencer the nerd); Kevin Hart (as Fridge the jock); Karen Gillan (as the super-fit avatar of Martha), and Jack Black, of all people, as Bethany. There are supposed to be five characters in the game-space, though, and we meet the fifth in due time: Alex Vreeke (Nick Jonas), who is introduced as an energetic teenager in the film’s 1996 prologue, only to get sucked into the game and become The Local Missing Boy whose endlessly grieving family still lives in their now-decrepit house.
The body-switching gag threatens to wear out its welcome quickly (hah ha, the scrawny nerd looks like Dwayne Johnson now, and the awkward girl has washboard abs!), but the actors take their assignments to play teenagers so seriously that the film surfs along on a wave of poker-faced earnestness, mixing moments of pathos in with its super-broad slapstick. (Except for Dan Castellaneta’s Homer Simpson, nobody screams in pain more hilariously than Kevin Hart.) At certain points you might feel as though you’re watching the longest, most lavishly produced “Saturday Night Live” sketch ever, complete with lush jungle scenery (the film was shot partly on location in Hawaii) and attacks by CGI hippos, rhinos, monkeys, crocodiles and the like. But since the entire thing plays like a 10-year old’s Disney Channel fantasy of what adolescence will be like, it works well enough, especially when coupled with intense discussions of the game’s rules (how many lives you get, how many levels there are, how to lift the curse from the land, etc).
Both the videogame’s construction and its gender politics are very ‘90s. The movie is aware of this and makes fun of it, though there’s a bit of an eat-your-cake-and-have-it-too aspect to the way it puts Johnson and Gillan's bodies on display. There are occasional jolts of mayhem, thanks mainly to the motorcycle-riding ninjas who do the bidding of the movie’s villain John Van Pelt (Bobby Cannavale), a demonic figure who wants to control the Jaguar’s Eye and claim dominion over the land. The action scenes are constructed with a bit of panache and manage to be exciting though you’re never seriously worried that any major character is going to lose all of their lives. Kasdan, a veteran filmmaker who happens to be the son of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “The Empire Strikes Back” screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, has an old-school sense of how to build those kinds of sequences. The shots are thoughtfully composed, for the most part, and you always know where you are and what's at stake from moment to moment.
The script’s scenarios allow for charming, often faintly surreal funny character moments, as when Black’s round yet flouncy Bethany instructs Gillan’s super-fit but still physically awkward Martha on how to be sexy. Black’s "hey, sailor" walk evokes Bugs Bunny in drag, and Gillan’s subsequent “seductive” dance to distract some guards looks as if she’s trying to shake sand out of her shorts while simultaneously dealing with a bad case of swimmer’s ear. The film doesn’t have the nerve to follow some of its more subversive ideas (such as Bethany lusting after Alex) to their logical conclusions, probably because this is an expensive project that’s terrified of alienating a certain sector of the public (imagine the walkouts if Jack Black lip-locked with Nick Jonas in something other than a CPR situation). But it’s still more surprising in more ways than it had to be, and the performers are clearly having such fun playing insecure teenagers that you stay involved even when the thinness of the enterprise becomes undeniable. This is a two-and-a-half star movie, honestly, bumped up a notch because the actors are likable, the film doesn’t have a cruel thought in its head, and the sentimental finale feels earned.
The rating system is also new. I will still rate the movies, but from 1 to 5 stars just to make the range a bit smaller and to show which one is really good or not.
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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