Review of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) by Thequietgamer — 29 Apr 2018

A confectionery sugar rush with a charismatic cast. What impressed me the most is just how well the main cast captured the personalities of their younger costars. We don't get to spend much time with their high-school aged counterparts, but we see enough to know just who they are and understand just how well they nailed their portrayals of them. They seem to be having a lot of fun playing kids out of their depth. Particularly Jack Black who is the highlight of the movie. His character Bethany actually has a really touching character arc while everyone else gets the stereotypical feel good endings.

While it never manages to capture the thrill and excitement of watching wild animals tear through a living room like in the original Jumanji, thanks to some impressive action sequences there is plenty of adventure and spectacle to be found inside. It's also very funny. I got plenty of laughs watching these kids freak out over their new bodies and whatever dangers came their way. The gender swap Black's character is going through is used to deliver at least two of the movie's funniest moments. The plot kind of keeps getting in the way though. It's bogged down in too much generic "be brave and proud of who you are" moralizing and has plenty of outright painful moments where it tries to explain gamer lingo and modern day teenage lifestyles in an effort to come off as hip and knowledgeable. It just needed to focus on the jokes. The rest of that stuff would have come along the way. While it doesn't hold a candle to our time with Robin Williams in the first Jumanji, "Welcome to the Jungle" does provide a good time. Ultimately it was a little more disposable than I was hoping for, but I can't complain too much about the final results as I still ended up having quite a bit of fun with it. I have to say I loved how they managed to make sense of how Jumanji could be a board game in one movie and a video game in the next. It was surprisingly smoothly done. I also appreciate how they managed to bring back and update the 1995 film for a new generation without going the reboot route. 7.