The 90s family adventure Jumanji was a fantasy romp about children being whooshed into the universe of a magical board game, where a former kid player played by Robin Williams had grown to adulthood, having been marooned there. The film seemed to be using the grammar and rhetoric of video-gaming, which is about getting from one level to another by not getting killed.
Now it has been upgraded for 2017 in a way that makes the gaming idea explicit, and yet also as quaint and antique as board games might have looked in 1995. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a big, brash, amiable entertainment with something of Indiana Jones, plus the body-swap comedy of Freaky Friday, or F Anstey’s Victorian classic Vice Versa. It features an endearing performance from Dwayne Johnson who, as a teen wimp magicked into a giant Herculean body, has to look nervy and nerdy and say things like “Oi vey”.
As before, there is a slightly cursory introductory sequence, but now it is set in the 90s. A weird-looking board game is discovered on a beach – it contains a game cartridge, a kid tries playing and he is spirited within. Flash forward to the present day, and four high-school teens – Instagram princess Bethany (Madison Iseman), earnest student Spence (Alex Wolff), alienated indie kid Martha (Morgan Turner) and humongous football star Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain) – are in trouble at school for various reasons. As a punishment they are made to clear out an old store room that contains this strange video-game Jumanji. Bored and slightly curious, they plug it in to an old monitor and randomly choose their digital avatars. Spence goes for Dr Smolder Bravestone, Bethany opts for Professor Shelly Oberon, Fridge goes for zoologist Moose Finbar and Martha chooses biologist Ruby Roundhouse.
And then, wham: they are spirited into this Inception-ary world: a vast, threatening jungle landscape. To his chagrin, Fridge finds that his body belongs to a quiveringly diminutive guy, played by querulous, panicky Kevin Hart. Martha finds that she is now a total babe, played by Karen Gillan. Spence finds that he inhabits the body of man-mountain Dwayne Johnson, who rather sweetly impersonates someone who thinks of himself as a seven-stone weakling. But most traumatised is Bethany, who finds that Professor Shelly is a man – a portly, cowardly scientist played by Jack Black. There are amusing scenes in which Shelly must get used to urinating with a penis, and deal with those moments in which one’s penis can give away private emotional turmoil. It’s a nice performance from Black.
Our quirky quartet have to battle huge rhinos, vast hippos, horrible snakes and a sinister baddie to restore a magic jewel to an occult statue. In this way, they will win the game and escape from the world of Jumanji. But they must also find that long-lost castaway player from the 90s, who uses phrases such as “da bomb” and thinks that Cindy Crawford is the epitome of beauty.
It’s a likable film which borrows liberally from everything and everyone, and if it’s put together by numbers, well, then it is done capably enough. There are some nice lines: I liked Ruby airily claiming that microbiology is one of her favourite biologies. Perhaps it is destined to be seen on small screens for sleepovers, but it’s an amiable effort that will go down like eggnog over Christmas.
