Good old Pontifex Maximus has returned from self-imposed exile with a trio of posts, all of which I’ll be posting throughout this week and the next.  The first of these is a dual movie review of two remake/sequels of the 1995 classic Jumanji, a flick that was both fun and terrifying to a then-ten-year old yours portly.

The film was remade/reimagined in 2017 as Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, and followed by a sequel in 2019, Jumanji: The Next Level.  Ponty gives both films a thorough treatment, and readers will be pleasantly surprised to know that, unlike many reboots of classic IPs from the 1980s and 1990s, these films don’t flounder.

With that, here are Ponty’s reviews of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle andJumanji: The Next Level:

When I first heard that the superb Robin Williams family vehicle Jumanji (1995) was to be remade, I groaned. Of course I would; modern remakes are usually pants, putting more focus on who is represented than making a good film. However, I was mildly surprised with the remake of Jumanji and more so with its superior sequel.

For those who have never seen the original, Alan Parish (Adam Hann-Byrd) is mysteriously sucked into a board game, Jumanji, only to be spat out (as Robin Williams) when the game is played decades later by Judy (Kirsten Dunst) and Peter Shepherd (Bradley Pierce). It turns out that Alan was transported to a jungle where he barely survived the inhabitants and the deranged hunter stalking it. Unfortunately, he and the two children have to complete the game, which means more of the Jumanji’s denizens finding their way into the real world. Chaos ensues until finally the game is completed and Alan is transported to the night he first entered the game, a child again. The subtext is pretty basic – Alan is forced to stand up for himself, against the game’s inhabitants and the hunter who resembles his father, something which he’d struggled with before he discovered the game – but it’s a family film, not War & Peace, so you’re not looking for anything too challenging. The remake is slightly different but the subtext is similar; four disparate teenagers whose lives have taken different turns, are forced into a tough environment, learn to change who they are, and work with each other to escape the game. The main character, Spencer (Alex Wolff) needs two stabs at the game to gain his confidence but hey ho, if he’d have toughened up after the first, we might not have had a second look and that would have been a travesty because the second film is much, much better than the first.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is like The Breakfast Club (1985) meets fantasy. Four high school teenagers – the self-obsessed blonde, the athlete, and a couple of nerds – are all handed detention and find themselves tidying up a basement room in the school. They find a battered game console containing a game called Jumanji and taking a break from the tedium of their chore, decide to give it a go. Unfortunately, after choosing their avatars, the game short circuits and pulls each of them in. Whereas the original sucked in one character and chucked a load more out, creating all sorts of chaos and mayhem, the action in this film is contained entirely within the game. There are no elephants and rhinos squashing cars and bulldozing down the streets, no mad hunters running around shooting up the place. To the real world, it’s as if nothing unusual was happening, time working very differently. Once Spencer and his soon to be friends are chucked out of the game at the end, it’s as if they’d never left. Like Narnia.

Anyway, they arrive in the jungle but as the avatars they have chosen. Spencer has become Dr. Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), a musclebound archaeologist; Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain) becomes Franklin ‘Mouse’ Finbar (Kevin Hart), a linguist who has the rather unfortunate weakness of being killed by cake; Martha (Morgan Turner) becomes Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan), a martial arts expert who dresses like pre-reboot Lara Croft; and Bethany (Madison Iseman), the vain, selfie obsessed blonde becomes the fat, bearded and male scientist Professor Sheldon ‘Shelley’ Oberon (Jack Black). They are greeted by Nigel Billingsley (Rhys Darby), an NPC (non player character) who serves as the game’s guide and narrator, and who tells them of the quest they need to complete in order to escape Jumanji.

They must put aside their differences and their past gripes to work together and restore a magical jewel known as the Jaguar’s Eye to its shrine in order to fulfil their quest. However, they must keep away from the game’s dangerous inhabitants and escape the clutches of the evil Van Pelt (no, not the Van Pelt of the original film, a reimagining of that character played by Bobby Cannavale), a corrupt archaeologist who took the jewel from its shrine and used it to control the island’s creatures. They also have to keep an eye on the mysterious tattoos on their arms, three black lines which signify their lives in the game. Lose all three and it’s game over, for real. Partway through their adventure, they meet a pilot, Jefferson ‘Seaplane’ McDonough (Nick Jonas), who is operating as the avatar for one Alex Vrees, a youngster who was sucked into the game many years before his new allies and who has spent years trying to escape the game. When the game has been completed, Alex is thrown back into his teenage body in 1996 and comes to know his real life counterparts 21 years later, as an adult played by Colin Hanks.

Visually, it’s stunning and the action sequences are played out as well as any other decent fantasy family adventure. Not too dissimilar to the Brendan Fraser Mummy remakes, witty one liners punctuate a fast paced storyline, though we are given the opportunity to view the changes in our characters as they each discover what was missing from their lives, the game reshaping them as much as they reshape the game. And as much fun as it was watching the adults portraying very different teenagers, it’s nowhere near as much fun as it is in the second.

The Next Level sees the survivors from the first film at college. They agree to meet each other at a café in their home town but Spencer has failed to appear. Though they have been trying to get in touch with him, he hasn’t returned their messages so they go to his house to try to find him, where they meet his cantankerous grandfather Eddie (Danny DeVito) and his former business partner (former friend, too) Milo (Danny Glover). Their search is interrupted by an abrupt drumming, which they recognise as Jumanji, and they come to the realisation that not only did Spencer repair the console but he has gone back into the game. Reluctantly, they follow him but the battered console sucks everyone apart from Bethany into the game – Milo and Eddie enter it this time. What follows is not only another great adventure but a much wittier script and another chance to see Black, Johnson, Hart, and Gillan pulling off trickier roles superbly. Spencer didn’t get his wish this time, returning to the game not as Dr. Bravestone but a sneak thief, Ming Fleetfoot (Awkwafina) – Bravestone is now inhabited by grandpa Eddie and kudos to Dwayne Johnson for pulling off DeVito’s characteristics; in the first game, he characterises Spencer’s insecurities well but he plays up Eddie’s confusion and irritation from the get go, whilst enjoying his new found youth again, albeit in a much different body. The teenagers who have played the game already have a good idea of what the game has in store for them but the two elder statesmen take a little while adjusting, not to their bodies or minds, but their environment.

Their enemy this time around is a sadistic warlord named Jurgen the Brutal (Rory McCann), who has stolen a magic amulet which has plunged Jumanji into darkness. The group must recover said amulet to complete the game but against the power of Jurgen and his army, that’s easier said than done, especially when two of our heroes – Bravestone and Mouse – are still squabbling over their past in the real world. Meanwhile, Bethany finds Alex and they return to the game to aid their friends.

While this film contains much of the fun of the first film, watching the actors working through their new roles is much more entertaining. I particularly enjoyed the performances of Johnson and Hart, the former embracing his new found youth and strength whilst retaining his bad-tempered nature, and the latter deliberating over every word, so slowly in fact that by the time he has made his point, he has inevitably plunged either the group or one of them at least into danger. DeVito and Glover must have enjoyed seeing themselves played so well by those guys. This part, where Mouse long-windedly attempts to describe the characteristics of an ostrich, particularly amused me.

Throughout the film, Milo and Eddie have the opportunity to patch up their long standing feud and by the end, they have reached an understanding. Eddie in particular discovers that ageing is something to be celebrated rather than cursed and his mannerisms ease up, his relationship with his daughter and grandson becoming much more convivial. Meanwhile, Spencer confesses to Martha that he hadn’t been feeling great and needed, from his point of view, to return to the game to rediscover his floundering confidence. While the alteration from one character to another may not have been the change he was after, he does retake Bravestone’s avatar as the game progresses and realises that the changes in his real life were not something to get hung up on.

Despite the fact that the majority of these films are action/adventure based, we are given a lot of time to examine our characters, their previous issues, the way they alter as the stories progress, their relationships to each other and how they are when they leave Jumanji. These are both fun stories but they also have a nice depth to them too and as for the main actors, they play their alter egos very well indeed.

As with any game or film or story, it’s never about getting from A-Z, it’s about the journey and the quest our characters find themselves on makes the outcome more worthwhile and meaningful.

If you haven’t watched these films, stream them, buy them, whichever. We’ve watched them repeatedly, certainly the second, and they never tire. They’re fun, they’re humourous, and they pack a punch.