Little Man Tate gets lost in jungle for 26 years, comes back as Robin Williams - 'Jumanji' Review...
It’s interesting to transport yourself back to late 1995 when Jumanji was released into theaters. The movie-going public was still waiting eagerly for another stupendous family adventure to follow Jurassic Park, which blew away audiences of all ages despite some grisly scenes. The badly disappointing Congo had been released earlier in the year but younger audiences were recently charmed by the animated adventures of Pocahontas, while more mature audiences were considering the implications of Outbreak and reminiscing with the brilliant re-creation of the 1960s in Apollo 13.Teenage audiences (which included myself) were mostly still running around the high schools quoting Clueless or ranting and raving about the (now primitive) technological wonders of The Net (you can order pizza using a computer!!), although in my own circle of friends we were more interested in the techno-criminals in Hackers, the pure, unfiltered awesomeness of Seven and that amazing blonde who got naked in Species.
Oh, and I was ditching school on an almost daily basis with one of the owners of this very website and sneaking over to Fashion Island to watch Ace Ventura over and over.
Sadly, Jumanji was a definite step backwards in almost all adventure movie departments. The special effects more than anything else are a conspicuous regression, but the biggest problem is that the effects sequences themselves are so disjointed from the rest of the movie.
It all starts with a quick sequence taking place in 1869 where two kids bury a magical board game called Jumanji in a wooden chest in the woods. This is about the extent of our knowledge of the game, by the way. There is a whole other movie that takes place before this one begins, without which Jumanji is left with a gaping plot hole. But no matter, the important thing is that this is a board game is so hellacious and fearsome that the kids fear for the soul of anyone who happens to dig it up in the future. No word on why they didn’t just burn it.Cut to 1969, where a young boy named Alan Parrish happens upon the chest at the site where his father is overseeing the construction of his shoe factory. He takes it home and plays a game with his friend Sarah. The game pieces snap into position without being touched and move themselves once the dice are rolled, but even more amazing are the physical manifestations of dangerous safari creatures and other mayhem conjured up by the game.
After Alan and Sarah have each taken a turn (Alan’s even accidentally), Alas has been sucked off into Jumanji, wherever that is, and Sarah has taken off down the street, pursued by a squeaking mass of bats.Then we jump ahead again, this time 26 years into the future to the modern day (1995). The house has been empty for years and a new family is moving in. The two adopted kids, Judy (a young Kirsten Dunst) and Peter find the game and begin to play, opening the door to Jumanji and bringing back things like lions and monkeys and Alan Parrish, now a grown, hairy man without the benefit of any human contact for the vast majority of his life. It turns out that the only way to stop the black magic of the game is to get to the end and say “Jumanji.” And since Alan and Sarah were in the middle of an unfinished game for all of those years, they are now in the middle of a four-person game with Judy and Peter and they must all take their respective turns until someone makes it to the end.
[caption id="attachment_25889" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Man-eating floors not included."]
[/caption]Sarah, of course, has suffered a life of diminished credibility ever since she claimed that Alan disappeared into a board game when she was a child. So much for the truth setting you free!
The movie is structured as a series of special effects sequences involving whatever dangerous manifestation results from each person’s turn rolling the dice. They all scramble frantically in the face of new dangers every ten or fifteen minutes or so, then the dangers disappear neatly for the next person to take their turn, and so on until the end of the movie. It’s not exactly the most imaginative structuring going on here, but I will admit that the ending has a little twist that, while it includes one of the cheapest happy Hollywood copout moves in movies (they also pulled the same thing in Click), I would be lying if I said it wasn’t at least a little heartwarming.
[caption id="attachment_25890" align="alignright" width="300" caption="The young Alan Parrish's father later re-appears out of Jumanji as this safari hunter. We never learn why."]
[/caption]Unfortunately, a lot of the movie is geared toward kids around 10 years old, the same age as the kids in the movie, but it also contains some imagery and some situations that kids that age would find much too frightening or intense. There is a scene involving giant spiders that admittedly look like nothing other than big plastic spider-puppets but that is still just as creepy as anything in Arachnophobia. So beware if you have a fear of creepy crawlies!
I would be lying if I said the movie wasn’t at all fun or entertaining. The story is told in an unconventional way, but it’s also true that it’s an unconventional story, which at least makes it a little more interesting. But in retrospect it’s a little hard to get over how perfectly everything is arranged as a setup for the ending. The relationships between Alan and Sarah and between the two of them and the other two kids who, needless to say, are orphans, will seem a little too perfect for some people. The characters are not uninteresting and the performances are satisfactory, but unfortunately they all take second billing to an ambitious special effects team that doesn’t seem to know when their half-baked digital creations are helping to drive the movie along and when they’re just swallowing everything else up.
[caption id="attachment_25884" align="aligncenter" width="184" caption="2.5 Beans out of 5."]
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