I didn’t see the last Jumanji in a theater because I thought the trailers looked lame. However, I eventually got around to watching it at home and was surprised by how much I liked it. It is a surprisingly clever, funny movie that manages to be both a true sequel to the original 1995 film and its own thing at the same time. Flash forward a couple of years and I was again unimpressed by the trailers for the latest Jumanji (which is the third or fourth in the series depending on if you count Zathura, the kinda-sorta sequel from 2005 that nobody remembers), but I went to see it anyway in hopes that it would match it’s predecessor. It doesn’t. While this is decent adventure movie, it falls victim to the reason why most comedy sequels fail: a joke just isn’t as funny the second time that you hear it.
A year or two after the events in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, one of the main characters has no fun or games. He has become depressed and actually misses the time that he spent in the game in the form of The Rock. Wishing to return and feel that sense of confidence and strength again, he reenters the game and his friends follow to rescue him. I certainly hope the film’s writers didn’t spend more that 5 minutes trying to come up with that fucking ridiculous excuse for getting these people back into Jumanji. To spice things up to white-girl spicy levels, they are joined by two new characters in the form of Danny DeVito and Danny Glover.
The reason why this isn’t a complete and utter failure is that the chemistry between the four leads (The Rock, Jack Black, Kevin Hart and Karen Gillan) is still there and still works. These four are just great together; they have great comedic timing and play off of each other very well. They are all essentially playing stereotypes of the roles that they always play (except for Gillan, who doesn’t really have a stereotype), but that may be why it works so well. The parts are all caricatures and that allows them to have fun with the roles and it all just somehow works when they are on screen together. Although, to be honest, I would gladly watch a 10-hour movie of Karen Gillan reading a thesaurus aloud if she wears her Jumanji outfit while she does it.
Unfortunately, I wish they were given something more interesting to do. I just saw this a couple of days ago and I can’t really remember what their main quest in the game was…something about getting a gem from a generic bad guy for some reason. It’s pretty damn forgettable. It also doesn’t particularly feel like Jumanji. Although the first film updated the core concept by ditching the board game in favor of a video game, it still felt connected to Jumanji because of multiple references and threads to the original movie. This no longer feels like it is part of the Jumanji mythology, it just feels like a generic action movie.
That would be fine if it was funny, but it isn’t. The first film was a surprisingly clever parody of video games, lampooning such video game staples as extra lives, character stats and NPCs (non-playable characters). This movie makes the same jokes. Again. You can’t tell the same fucking jokes over and over again and expect the same response from an audience. What was once clever is now stale. I didn’t laugh once during this movie because almost everything was a retread of the last movie. Hell, even Kevin freaking Hart made me laugh in the last movie and I usually hate the “if I say something loudly, then that makes it a joke” brand of humor. The addition of DeVito and Glover grows old quickly because they are just an excuse for, no pun intended, old-people jokes. I get it. They are old so they don’t understand how video games work. It’s not particularly funny the first time, so you sure as shit can be sure it isn’t funny when they are still doing the same joke two hours later.
This isn’t awful, but it is a disappointment. With the enormous success of the last movie, I understand that Columbia Pictures would want a sequel as quickly as possible, but the lame plot and tired jokes make this feel incredibly rushed. Comedy sequels are incredibly tough, though; it’s like trying to capture lighting in a bottle twice. The only comedy sequel that I can think of that surpassed the original is Christmas Vacation, while there are far more abysmal failures like Caddyshack 2 and (shudder) Blues Brothers 2000. This is in the middle of the road, somewhere around Ghostbusters 2 territory. If you are looking for something lighthearted to see over the holidays, this fits the bill but it likely won’t keep a permanent place in your memory.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumanji:_Welcome_to_the_Jungle#/media/File:Jumanji_Welcome_to_the_Jungle.png
