Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle - Review
This review of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is spoiler-free!
So, for those of you who have had the fortitude to read my articles from the beginning, you should know that I have committed yet another cardinal sin as a critic. I have not seen the original Jumanji! Sure that's definitely not on the same level as some of the other film crimes I have committed over time, but I have always felt a bit of a tinge of regret for never watching that original. That regret, of course, grew to another level when it was announced that there was going to be another film in this saga. Taking the idea of Jumanji to a new generation of kids, I was actually pretty excited for the film but worried in the same sense. Let's dig right into Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle!
Jumanji follows the story of four young high school students who after a series of unfortunate circumstances end up in detention together. These students follow the typical archetypal characters that you would find in a film like this, so that was a bit of a bummer. Quickly though, they happen upon an old gaming console and hook it up only to find a video game version of Jumanji staring them down. After choosing their avatars, they are teleported into the game, and in order to get back to the real world, they have to beat Jumanji. So, honestly, the story is rather generic and what you'd expect from a Jumanji sequel, to be honest. But, it does some good things in changing up the usual formula that you would expect from the major stars of the film. So, while it's nothing new for the action blockbusters, it was a fun overall adventure.
As for characters, I really want to get in-depth with this because, for me, this is what made the movie stand out for me overall. When you have a movie with actors such as Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, and Jack Black; you might find yourself just expecting the usual kind of formula from each of these people (outside of Karen Gillan who in my opinion hasn't found her true niche role). The absolutely stellar thing about this movie though is that it manages to turn this idea on its head. To start, we're introduced to four main teenage kids in the vein of a jock, an awkward girl, a popular girl, and a nerd. These for kids actually have a bit for to them than just being a means to get us to the real action of the film. While I can't say that I was truly invested in their characters, they left enough of an impact on me that the true strength of the movie came out when they got into the world of Jumanji.
When all of these students are teleported into Jumanji, we really get the chance to see the work by the actors' shine. Each of these characters absolutely embodies the teenager that they were in real life. So instead of getting a confident and strong-willed Dwayne Johnson, we get a rather cowardly and genuine person. This follows suit with each of the other three characters. Along with the general idea of each actor embodying the role of their real-life counterpart, it's great to see how the film shakes up the formula by putting the children into different roles than what they anticipated for themselves. For example, the popular girl of the group is placed in the role of an overweight male scientist. We get to see these kids come to grips with their new world, at least for a time and it was really interesting to see.
Looking back on Welcome to the Jungle as an overall film, I can't necessarily call it a mind-blowing film or a completely new and beautiful take on the action genre. What I can do though is continue to praise the character work done by our leads, especially that of Karen Gillan and Dwayne Johnson. They both were able to fully capture their true characters in a way that I did not expect. Seeing Johnson play a role that is outside of what he usually portrays was refreshing and leads me to believe that down the road we could see him dive into more dramatic roles. The problem from Jumanji simply comes from how generic of a film it is, but it does just enough to be enjoyable and a worthy sequel to the original film.
