![]() ![]() In 1995’s Jumanji, we don’t learn a whole lot about the actual jungle of Jumanji land. That’s right, friends: It’s time to get Mad Online about Jumanji. Welcome to the Jungle has the name of the beloved franchise, sure, but the filmmakers apparently couldn’t be bothered to carry over much of anything else. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle violates every rule of Jumanji, a story I had not previously thought of as a place that had rules, at least until the theater-wide coos of eighth-graders at the first sight of a shoehorned-in Nick Jonas. There is jungle, yes, and there is the vague contour of gameplay. While the movie calls itself Jumanji and spends most of the first 10 minutes showing us the written-out word from every possible angle as if in disbelief that the relevant intellectual property really had been acquired, it does not seem to have much of anything in common with its precursor. Or, rather, it is very simple, but in a way that itself is a little complicated. (The Purell-clutching nerd becomes the Rock, the star football player becomes Kevin Hart, the popular girl becomes Jack Black, yadda yadda.)īut I was wrong, because Welcome to the Jungle is not as simple as it seems. ![]() The new version, out this week, was pitched as more or less the same story, with some minor twists: This time, the world is accessed via a video game instead of a board game our four heroes are sucked into the jungle instead of having the wild creatures of Jumanji burst out into theirs and due to the video game element, they assume adult avatars, leaving their original teen forms (and actors) back in detention. ![]() I, like so many millennials worth our avocado toast, grew up in the warm glow of the Robin Williams–led original, released in 1995. ( Ma’am, why are you following this field trip of eighth-graders into a movie theater alone? Or, Is it really appropriate to buy a large popcorn at 11 a.m.? Or, Excuse me, you’re trying to expense what?) But I figured that Jumanji 2.0 would be a reasonably straightforward excursion. I expected to have to answer some, maybe. I did not expect to leave the Wednesday matinee of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle with questions. ![]()
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