A curious thing about Jumanji as a franchise is that it means different things to different people. For myself, I remember when my parents first let me read Chris Van Allsburg’s vaguely scary, yet captivating, children’s book. (Monkeys in the kitchen, man.) But to many more, the only warm if faded memory is that of when they saw the 1995 Jumanji movie starring Robin Williams. For all intents and purposes, Robin Williams is “Jumanji” to a certain generation. This goes so far as to include even members of the castof Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Sony’s semi-sequel and total-reworking of the magical game concept.
Yet while the 2017 film pays plenty of homage to the movie that saw Williams run from digital crocodiles (who don’t hold up nearly as well as you recall), that first picture is not really what Welcome to the Jungle is about. Which is one of its greatest assets. Holding as much sly reverence for Tom Hanks’ Big as it does the first Jumanji, Jake Kasdan and Dwayne Johnson’s lighthearted and fairly disarming romp through the jungle (or at least postcard Hawaiian scenery) is the type of breezy, all-age power fantasy that used to populate family entertainment of various brows in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Obviously aspiring to use the Jumanji name to achieve something as broadly appealing as that Penny Marshall/Tom Hanks classic, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle lands closer to The Mask or The Santa Clause. Still, that might just be in the sweet spot for its family entertainment ambitions.
Presented with a maximum embrace of archetypal shorthand, Welcome to the Jungle begins with a pseudo-Breakfast Club being forced together during detention. There’s Spencer, the nerd (Alex Wolff), Fridge, the jock (Ser’Darius Blain), Bethany, the popular girl (Madison Iserman), and Martha, the anti-social wallflower (Morgan Turner). These generic statuses are as deep as the notebook paper they write on, and the prologue they inhabit threatens to err into deadly cliché.
But then the hook happens: they all get trapped inside a 1990s-esque and Nintendo-inspired video game, and the movie blessedly finds new life. Akin to watching the Franchise Viagra™ meme take effect in real-time, suddenly Spencer is played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson; athletic and arrogant Fridge has been reduced to Kevin Hart’s bite-sized fun; the introverted Martha is in a shamelessly barely there Lara Croft-inspired costume worn by Karen Gillan; and poor, vain Bethany suddenly looks an awful lot like Jack Black.
A movie literally built around its power fantasy of a geek becoming the Rock’s chiseled “Dr. Bravestone,” whose listed in-game abilities include “smoldering intensity”—or the nightmare of a social media princess then waking up inside the body of a rotund man—Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle milks its premise for all its worth. There is some lip-service about needing to win the game to get home, and a villain who chases after Bravestone like he’s a Nazi in an Indiana Jones movie, plus Nick Jonas as a kid who’s been trapped inside the body of a Jonas Brother for 20 years, but the story is as skimpy as Martha’s outfit. This is all about the appeal of Johnson playing meek and cowardly, or Black gazing longingly at him while biting his lower lip. And on that eyelevel alone, Welcome to the Jungle wins the game it sets out to play.
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