Jumanji was…

Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle

Directed By: Jake Kasdan

Grade: B

Actually a lot of fun. Which is hard for me to admit because pretty much from the first preview my reaction was along the lines of, “That looks awful. Oh my God. Could they make it look any worse!” “There’s not any ideas left in Hollywood…”

Though that last one is still true. It’s not the greatest movie or original (obviously) but I enjoyed it. It had some solid laughs and it was one that my nephew really enjoyed.

Everyone knows the story four high-school kids who are completely typical; jock, nerd, shy girl and social media obsessed hot girl, get sucked into the game and have to win it in order to get back out. Making Jumanji a video game was interesting and brought some funny stuff there. Like “smoldering,” and the three lives scenario.

It’s funny because one of the things that annoyed me the most in the previews was the character avatars.

But this actually turned out to be the best part. The cast more than made it work. They worked well together and had good chemistry. Like there were actual moments when I was rooting for Jack Black and Nick Jonas even though in the back of my mind it was like, “He’s way older than her!” Lots of credit to Jack Black in this one…

He took what easily could have been an annoying character and turned her into my favorite of the movie. Which is impressive because usually I’m all about Karen Gillian/ my favorite Doctor Who companion.

I did like her character. I remember they got some blowback when pictures in that outfit came out. I wouldn’t say they justified it in the movie but it did’t bother me so much. I did appreciate her back and forth and burgeoning friendship with Bethany was at least part of their story.

Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart had some nice moments to. But I really didn’t care about either of their characters as much. It was nice to know that after he annoyed me so much in Baywatch he really came back in this one. I definitely prefer him when he’s actually trying. I’ll probably check out there other movie (movies? I don’t even know.) together as well.

Jumanji also had super pretty scenery which I’m always a sucker for…

On the downside not all the effects looked that great. I forgot the bad guys name pretty much immediately (it doesn’t matter) just thought of him as Bobby Cannavale the whole movie. And I generally liked the characters more in the game then outside of it. I got a little teary-eyed at parts of the ending but also someone shows up and all I could think was how much they looked like their father… and than all the ways they didn’t.

Recommend: Yes. It was entertaining. It was funny. The kid enjoyed it as well 🙂 It’s not rewriting the book on movies by any stretch but sometimes you just want to enjoy yourself.