Movie Review: Jumanji
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What Parents Should Know
The director of HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS offers a sort of
Kids-I-Made-Your-Frightening-Plaything-Come-to-Life. Lots of
thrills and perils but little joy, as monstrous jungle
predators pour out of an enchanted board game to overwhelm
hapless kids and adults in a depressed New England town. It may
be too intense for some kids, although young viewers who aren't
nightmare-prone will be diverted by the creatures,
computer-generated by the same Hollywood whizzes who brought to
life the dinosaurs of JURASSIC PARK.
Though there's an ending straight of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE that rewrites history and puts reality together even better than it was before, small viewers may prefer THE POLAR EXPRESS, derived from similar storybook material.
Common Sense Media Review
Usually a movie based on a game is a questionable
proposition, but in the case of JUMANJI the game is at least
fictional. The film is based on a picture-book fantasy by the
author/illustrator Chris Van Allsburg, and was adapted by
filmmaker Joe Johnston, who directed Disney's HONEY, I SHRUNK
THE KIDS. There are elements of that surprise family-film hit
in JUMANJI, but little of the joy, as monstrous jungle
predators pour out of an enchanted board game to overwhelm a
depressed New England town.
The prologue shows a furtive nighttime expedition in the 19th century to bury a board game called Jumanji, of unexplained origin. In 1969 New Hampshire a lonely rich boy, Alan Parrish, happens to dig up the game and plays it. Don't ask how or why, but the relic materializes multitudes of hostile African animals, and Alan gets sucked into the jungle-world of the game. His disappearance is wrongly attributed to a murder plot by his own factory-owner father, and the local economy collapses as a result of the Jon-Benet Ramsey-style rumors and scandal.
More than 25 years later two orphans (Bradley Pierce, Kirsten Dunst) move into the old Parrish house, find the game again, and start playing. Their dice throws unleash a fresh rampage of vicious beasts. The calamity also frees Alan (Robin Williams), who, due to the passage of time, is no longer an adolescent but a full-grown semi-wild man, being tracked by another of the game's characters, Van Pelt (Jonathan Hyde), a crazed, implacable, old-school safari hunter.
The only way to return everything to normal is for the kids to continue playing Jumanji to the end, even though each roll of the dice seems to unleash another swarm of attacking, baneful animals, from demonic bats to man-eating plants to a ghastly herd of giant spiders. There's no sense of wonder, really, just one scare after another, and the fact that the killer Van Pelt is played by the same actor who embodied Alan's snooty father adds another dark note.
Young viewers who aren't nightmare-prone might be diverted a little by the creatures, computer-generated by the same Hollywood whizzes who brought to life the dinosaurs of JURASSIC PARK. JUMANJI was supposedly the first time CGI was used on such a massive scale to evoke existing animals such as elephants, baboons, and crocodiles, although the filmmakers hedge their bets a little thanks to the subject matter. The pixilated predators all have a slightly livid, unreal glaze that's fitting for how lurid engravings and drawings of the late 1800s might portray exotic beasts.
That's nice; so what's the script's excuse for its weaknesses? Despite his reputation as a comedian, Williams pretty much plays it straight as the time-displaced, long-marooned Alan. The young actors are good, but there's a heavy undercurrent of continual peril, death, and morbidity, with no breathing room. The ending, in which history is rewritten for all the characters even better than IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, seems a little forced, to say the least, and doesn't dispel the general unpleasantness.
Another Van Allsburg storybook classic "The Polar Express" was also adapted for the screen later, using more advanced computer graphics -- and considerably less fright and menace.
Common Sense Media is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing information to help parents make media and entertainment choices for their families.
