Jumanji Sequels

For today, I thought I would review a series of sequels to “Jumanji” that I never got around to seeing until rather recently. No, I didn’t binge watch them, but I saw them over time. Let’s get things started with the first sequel, “Zathura,” released in 2005.

Roger Ebert started his review out by saying, “The opening credits of "Zathura" are closeups of an old science-fiction board game, a game that should have existed in real life and specifically in my childhood, but which was created for this movie. In these days of high-tech video games, it's remarkable that kids once got incredibly thrilled while pushing little metal racing cars around a cardboard track: The toy car was yours, and you invested it with importance and enhanced it with fantasy and pitied it because it was small, like you were.”

These games are what help kills time on the boredom of long Saturdays. In “Zathura,” time is dragging with Walter and Danny Budwing, two brothers, one 10 and the other 6, whose father has left them home alone for a few hours. Not completely alone: Their teenage sister Lisa is tasked to babysit, from the comfort of her own bed with her iPod. Walter and Danny fight, as brothers always do. Danny hides in the dumbwaiter (something that will be shocking to any child who is watching this movie), and Walter lowers him into the basement, which for all children is a place that is very scary and dark with something creeping in the corners.

In the basement, Danny (Jonah Bobo) finds the Zathura board game and tries to get Walter (Josh Hutcherson) to play with him. Walter instead wants to watch sports on TV. Danny plays by himself. The game is an original metal device. You wind up the board and push a button, and your spaceship moves around the board, and the game ejects a card for you to read. Danny has Walter help him read it: Meteor Shower. Take Evasive Action. That’s where a meteor shower happens, burning through the living room ceiling and destroying the floor, crushing coffee tables and floor lamps.

The game takes the children to outer space where they have a surprising journey. The movie cleverly tries to not explain everything. The game is just like the one in “Jumanji,” which brought out so many scary animals and dangerous threats, and is another novel adaptation by the same author, Chris Van Allsburg, who also wrote the book that inspired “The Polar Express.” The differences between the three movies are essential: “The Polar Express” is a creative story, “Jumanji” is a scary tale where the children face scary threats that we see in nightmares, and Zathura is the only board game that lives up to the picture on the box.

One element to the film’s likability is during the meteor shower: The living room is destroyed, but Danny and Walter are safe. They run all over to avoid the meteors, but actually the meteors avoid them. Incredible things will occur the more they play Zathura, but they will survive. That does explain why they can still breathe when they open the front door to see that their house is in space.

Ebert said, “"Zathura" is the third film directed by Jon Favreau, an actor who, like Ron Howard, was possibly born to be a director. His first film was "Made" (2001), his second was "Elf" (2003) and his next will be inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars, a series I have always assumed was unfilmable, but on the basis of these three films, maybe not. Favreau brings a muscular solidity to his special effects; they look not like abstract digital perfection but as if hammered together from plywood, aluminum and concept cars. By that I don't mean they look cheap, I mean they have the kind of earnest sincerity you can find on the covers of Thrilling Wonder Stories. Since you may not know of this publication, I urge you to Google "Thrilling Wonder Stories magazine" and click on "images." You'll find the same kind of breathless pulp absurdity that "Zathura" brings to a boil.”

The brothers take turns. The game is endless. Another card reads Shipmate Enters Cryonic Sleep Chamber. This causes their sister Lisa, who, like every teen, is a late sleeper, has been frozen stiff in her bathroom. Ebert noted, “Other cards produce (a) a fearsome but badly coordinated robot, whose designers spent more time on its evil glowing red eyes than on its memory chips, (b) giant alien lizards who are directly from the pulp sci-fi tradition of bug-eyed monsters, (c) assault fire from spaceships that look like junkyard porpoises, and (d) a descent into a black hole. As the two kids hang on for dear life and lizards get sucked into the black hole, I was reminded of the kind of hubris celebrated by such Thrilling Wonder Stories titles as "Two Against Neptune."”

What is great is that Danny and Walter are predictably not going to get hurt. Alien lazar shots large amounts of their house, but never the amounts where they’re standing, and the giant lizards seem busier with overacting than eating the brothers. Ebert said, “The young actors, Hutcherson and Bobo, bring an unaffected enthusiasm to their roles, fighting with each other like brothers even when threatened with broasting by a solar furnace.” Their father is played by Tim Robbins; however his part is mainly him not being in the movie. Kristen Stewart makes the most of the sister Lisa’s non-frozen parts and there is the Astronaut, played by Dax Shepard, who enters the film at the climax and helps protect the kids from space dangers. Lisa’s crush on the Astronaut does get sick after the twist is revealed, although I do think people, like myself, might be able to figure it out sooner.

Ebert said, “"Zathura" lacks the undercurrents of archetypal menace and genuine emotion that informed "The Polar Express," a true classic that is being re-released again this year. But it works gloriously as space opera. We're going through a period right now in which every video game is being turned into a movie, resulting in cheerless exercises such as "Doom," which mindlessly consists of aliens popping up and getting creamed.” “Zathura” is based on a different type of game, where the players are not just shooting at targets, but are actually in real events that they need to figure out. They are active players, not passive marksmen. Nobody gets killed in “Zathura.” Unless you want to think about what happens to the lizards on the other side of the black hole.

Next up we have “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” released in 2017. There’s one main problem with this movie: everything takes place inside a videogame, which means the characters and problems are all virtual, which keeps them from being very exciting. Rich Cline said in his review, “That said, the filmmakers seriously go for broke, filling scenes with riotous action and sparky comedy.” This is rather entertaining if you can ignore how basic and obvious everything is.

When serving detention, four teens find the old videogame Jumanji. Smart kid, but shy Spencer (Alex Wolff), social media addict Bethany (Madison Iseman), athlete Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain) and loner Martha (Morgan Turner) are suddenly sucked into a jungle videogame where they, respectively, become adventurer Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), Professor Shelly Oberon (Jack Black), sidekick Moose Finbar (Kevin Hart) and action girl Roby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan). They have the mission of saving Jumanji by saving a giant jewel stolen by an archaeologist (Bobby Cannavle). Later in the game, they also meet Alex (Nick Jonas), who has no idea how long he’s been stuck in the game.

Cline noted, “The filmmakers seem to think that, since this story has a gaming premise, they can get away with glaringly contrived writing and sub-par digital effects. But that only further undermines any real sense of dread. The characters may only have three lives in this game, but there's never any possibility that one of them will lose their last one. And the preposterous nature of the level-by-level plot never allows space for anything more interesting to happen either in relationships or self-discovery.”

Cline continued, “That said, there's still an escapist charm at work here, and the cast is largely to thank for this. Johnson gleefully plays on his uber-hunk charm, Hart indulges in his sassiest banter, and Gillan gets to combine Martha's inner dork with a Lara Croft-style of action fierceness.” However, it’s Jack Black who has the most fun imitating a 16-year-old girl, especially when he can’t help but have an instant crush on Nick Jonas.

Cline noted, “While the movie appears to be aimed at a family audience, there's a strange hyper-violent attitude that, while never too explicit, is much harsher than necessary. And the gross-out jokes go a couple of steps too far for younger viewers.” For everyone else, this is the type of movie that isn’t really bad once you don’t think too deeply. It’s fast and silly, with gaming action and easy jokes. Strangely enough, it does have a kind of doubtfully resemblance on “The Breakfast Club.”

Finally we come to the latest installment, “Jumanji: The Next Level,” released in 2019. Any movie that has Awkwafina impersonating a crabby Danny DeVito can’t be completely bad. The young comedian with the grouchy old voice is a great task for the young actress. Margot Harrison said in her review, “And the body-swapping conceit of the Jumanji 2.0 movies gives her a chance to do her best old coot, her mouth tugging into a sour upside-down "V" as she demands to know what she's doing inside a video game.”

Why is this now a video game? “Jumanji” was a kids’ adventure film about a board game that brought jungle dangers to the children. In 2017, the board game changed into a video game to probably be updated, somewhat. In “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” teens saw that they were teleported into an old-school video game where they played out a jungle-themed adventure in the bodies of game characters that are rip-offs of “Indiana Jones.”

Harrison said, “But the real raison d'être of the holiday hit was comedy — specifically, stars playing comically against type.” In the Jumanji game, the high school nerd, Spencer, was playing the fearless, strong adventurer Dr. Smolder Bravestone. The football star, Fridge, became a miniature sidekick Moose Finbar. The beauty addict Bethany had to be in the body of Jack Black, and the wallflower Martha was the tough Ruby Roundhouse, with one of the strengths being “dance fighting.” Harrison noted, “Wackiness ensues and, by the end, everybody's learned a little lesson about exploring their potential.”

“The Next Level” follows the same formula, with one exception: This time around, director Jake Kasdan and his co-writers, Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg, add a grumpy-old-men side-story. Home from college for the holidays, Spencer has to deal with his illogical grandfather, Eddie (DeVito), whose favorite thing to do is complain at his former coworker, Milo Walker (Danny Glover). When Spencer goes back into the Jumanji game, his friends go to find him, and the fighting senior citizens get pulled in as well.

Harrison noted, “This setup occasions some reshuffling of real-world characters and their in-game avatars, plus patient explanations of the game's mechanics to seniors (actually aimed at audience members who missed the first installment). Otherwise, the story proceeds in familiar fashion. Once again, the characters must complete a generic quest in a series of generic settings enlivened by ferocious digital beasts (ostriches, mandrills, a toothy hippo). Once again, each player has just three lives to lose in various gross ways. Once again, adult viewers may find their minds wandering during the boilerplate action sequences.”

Once again, the comedy of actors acting strange is the movie’s highlight. Harrison said, “Only Johnson and Awkwafina (as a thief avatar called Ming Fleetfoot) get really juicy bits this time, but they savor them, and the snarking on clichés of the action-adventure genre keeps the time passing enjoyably enough.” If the lessons learned aren’t really affecting this time around, at least they’re a reminder that people can change at any age.

Harrison noted, “The Next Level enticed a record number of holiday shoppers into theaters last weekend, rendering further levels of Jumanji inevitable. Will we ever learn what sort of sadist designed this magical, morphing game (which survived being smashed at the end of the previous film) to trap unwary youngsters and oldsters? Will we ever see anyone perma-die, or must that be reserved for the R-rated gritty Jumanji reboot? Just how intensely can Dr. Bravestone (whose official skill list includes "intense smoldering") smolder before he explodes?” For this franchise, it’s not completely over, especially if you stick around for the mid-credits scene.

I’m sorry to say, but after “Jumanji” and “Zathura,” the franchise doesn’t have the same feel that it once had. I don’t like how they changed the board game into a video game, but they’re dumb action comedy flicks. If you want to watch them, go right ahead, but the last movie was just so absurd. Just see “Jumanji” and “Zathura” and not the last two movies. I think the next one they release will go back to the original format, but that’s questionable.

Thank you for joining in on tonight’s review. Check in this Friday for the continuation of “Jackie Chan Month.”