Review of Jumanji (1995) by Movielonely94 — 04 Sep 2011

It's amazing that most fantasy movies (aside from the ones with British actors) have American protagonists and British antagonists as well and that's the reason why we get Joe Johnton's fantasy comedy adventure Jumanji, loosely based on a children's literature book of the same name by Chris Van Allsburg.

It revolves around two children named Judy and Peter Shepard as they discover an ancient board game known as Jumanji. Once they started playing it, mystical jungle animals started to appear and cause trouble to their home and the town of Brantsford. Then, they realize that they released a grown man named Alan Parrish, who has been stuck inside the game for 26 years and needs the children's help along with an old friend of his named Sarah Whittle to survive the dangers that lie within the game's magical power.

The reason that I'm reviewing this is because it has been my childhood favorite next to Disney's The Lion King ever since from the classic 1990s. If you understand this, then I'll make my opinion about it just to make it easier for you.

The only problem that I had with this movie was the slow pacing. It was very tiresome when it comes to other movies from the eighties and nineties until the climax of the movie, it started to become faster than before it gives the characters some development.

As for the rest of the movie, everything about this film blew me away with a lot of good things. The fantasy elements of the CGI animals from Industrial Light and Magic was very damn cool they just looked exactly like the book (except the snake for some reason). The actors like Robin Williams, Bonnie Hunt, Kirsten Dunst, Bradley Pierce, and the rest have done a great job at their performances and the comedy in this movie was very clever in my opinion though it didn't give me any laughs, but I think it might as well when I watch it again someday.

The action sequences were very good when it comes to other fantasy movies with fantastic action sequences. The scenes with the animals were given some screen time and they were very good, but when it comes to very frightening scenes in fantasy movies, the most scary scene of all was the lion because it was scary and too dark for the kids, but I've enjoyed it though. The script, in my opinion, was pretty decent. Not outstanding, but not that bad either. The music score from from the brilliant James Horner was thrilling, epic, and very emotional.

It told a very good story and the climax near the end of the movie was amazing. Even though it's not completely faithful to the book (unless you could check it out if you like), I've found this movie to be Joe Johnston's greatest work ever made and it's in no doubt one of the best movies, in my opinion, from the classic 1990s. A big thumbs up from me.