directed by Jake Kasdan
written by Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg and Kasdan
About two years ago, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the action-comedy Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle or the sequel to the 1995 hit film starring Robin Williams, to which it bore only the remotest resemblance. Having loathed the older film in just about every respect, I gave that sequel, a relatively mediocre film, a pretty high grade all things considered, noting just how drastically it had improved on its predecessor. Audiences thought so, too, and the film very nearly grossed a billion dollars at the worldwide box office.
Two years later, I have sat through the obligatory sequel, and while I rolled my eyes a bit at the flimsy pretext for having the characters revisit this world, I will acknowledge that the filmmakers did a decent job following up, especially since they experimented a bit more with the original "body swapping" premise.
As anyone who's seen a trailer for this movie will know, Spencer (Alex Wolff), who spent majority of the last movie in the world of the video game Jumanji as Dwayne Johnson's perfect human specimen Smolder Bravestone, having gone off to college in New York, away from his friends, is miserable and lonely once again. Apparently the last time he truly felt alive was as Bravestone, and so, as he bunks with his visiting grandfather Eddie (Danny DeVito) Spencer hatches a plan to get back into the world of the game, which he has salvaged from the dumpster in which he and his friends put it and the end of the last movie, right after taking a baseball bat to it. When Spencer's friends Martha (Morgan Turner), Fridge (Ser'Darius Blaine) and Bethany (Madison Iseman) finally meet up at a local diner and Spencer doesn't show up, they deduce that something is up with him and go to his house, where they find his grandfather Eddie, who is the middle of an argument with his estranged friend and business partner Milo (Danny Glover) and discover that Spencer has gone back into Jumanji. Being the friends that they are, Martha, Fridge and Bethany decide to go in after him, but things do not at all turn out the way they expected. Of course, there's a quest to recover some artifact from some horrible-looking bad guy (Rory McCann), but the protagonists don't quite enter the game the same way they did last time.
Though the movie has been out for some time, and is about to lose a whole lot of screens to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and even though a lot of plot points were already spoiled in the trailers, I'll still leave some of the plot under wraps as there is some fun in discovering the movie. Suffice it to say that the original sequel's central joke about being bodily displaced is still very much front and center, and makes for some reasonably funny jokes, especially since Kasdan and his writers aren't afraid to mix things up a little bit. Some new elements are introduced, including a new video game character named Ming, played by comedienne Awkwafina and the visual effects are improved a bit, but plotwise, the film basically retreads the first sequel almost beat for beat. There's a nice bit of story between Eddie and Milo, but out of an apparent fear of bogging down the action with sentimentality the filmmakers don't really develop it a whole lot, opting to keep the film sprinting along to its inevitable and predictable conclusion.
I found the first sequel to be quite remarkable for having reinvented the wheel, improving on the first film to a degree I hadn't even imagined possible, but this film just basically plays it safe and gives audiences what the filmmakers think they want. It's hard to argue with 900++ million at the global box office, after all. It's a pleasant enough distraction, but they won't be getting any "most improved franchise" accolades from me this time around. Not that this'll stop Sony from laughing all the way to the bank.
6.5/10
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