Jumanji
1995
D: Joe Johnston
**********
Pros: Premise has some clever ideas, Likeable Cast, Robin
Williams
Cons: Tedious, episodic false suspense, Bad special
effects, One obnoxious political moment
This month Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle comes
out. While I like The Rock, I’m not too
optimistic about it. The premise would
work much better if the children were much younger and thus more susceptible to
the wonder of the situation. I also
don’t like how it seems like more of a comedy than an earnest adventure. However, I’m probably not
going to be as offended by it as many people my age. I never really got to watch Jumanji until recently, so I never had
much nostalgia for it. While many people
will be saying Welcome to the Jungle
ruined their childhoods (a sentiment I’m not completely unsympathetic to), in
all fairness the first movie was not that good.
The plot begins in 1969 and focuses a young Alan Parrish (Adam
Hann-Byrd). Alan’s lifestyle mostly
consists of avoiding generic bullies, but he also has a tense relationship with
his father Sam (Jonathan Hyde), who thinks he should go to boarding school. It seems odd that they would cast an English
actor here, although it makes more sense when you consider that the same actor
also plays a villainous Victorian hunter who is symbolic of the protagonist’s
unresolved paternal issues. Alan causes
an accident at his father’s shoe factory, which causes employee Carl Bentley
(David Alan Grier) to lose his job despite his inventing a new type of shoe. He eventually finds the board game Jumanji,
having been guided to it by magical drumbeats, and plays it with his friend
Sarah Whittle (Laura Bell Bundy). During
his turn the game commands him to remain in The Jungle until someone rolls a 5
or 8, and he is sucked into the game while Sarah is frightened off by bats.
Twenty-six
years later Nora Shepherd (Bebe Neuwirth) moves into the abandoned Parrish
mansion with her niece Judy (Kirsten Dunst) and nephew Peter (Bradley Pierce),
whose parents died the year before. One
kid is a pathological liar while the other talks only to the other sibling, but
they’re a very likable duo for child protagonists, and this is their way of dealing with the loss of their parents. They eventually find the Jumanji board game
and start playing it. Their rolls
unleash episodic animal attacks (most of the animal sounds are provided by
Frank Welker) and
natural disasters in the real world.
Unfortunately, the special effects leave much to be desired. There are unconvincing
animated animals and at one point there’s a big, plush lion that’s very
convincing as a big, plush lion. Being
made in the mid 90’s may have explained the bad CGI, but it doesn’t explain the
bad practical effects. What’s
disappointing is that Johnston is usually good at
this sort of thing.
On one turn
they release a bearded adult Alan (Robin Williams), who’s overjoyed to find
himself back in the real world. In a
relatable moment of lovable cowardice, he momentarily refuses to help the kids
finish the game, instead wanting to continue what’s left of his life. He finds out that his father died recently,
having abandoned his business to search for his lost son. Alan is a likable character, but he seems a
little too well-adjusted for someone
who’s been alone in a dangerous jungle since childhood. He has an initially rough first impression
with Peter, but eventually warms up to him upon realizing he’s becoming too
much like his own father. When he
decides to finish the game with the kids, they notice that two extra pieces
have been added: his and Sarah’s.
They find
Sarah (Bonnie Hunt), who’s been through years of therapy since her ordeal. She’s been led to believe she had hallucinated
the whole thing, so it takes some convincing to get her to join. She’s reluctant to do so, but she agrees and
her love for Alan grows during the story.
While this is a likable and interesting cast, they still need conflicts
that are interesting, and her recruitment is the last interesting plot point.
Besides the
game itself, the closest thing to a villain is the aforementioned Victorian
hunter Van Pelt (Hyde), who hunts Alan obsessively after being brought into the
real world. The execution of this potentially interesting arc is shoddy, and it results in one of the more irritating scenes in the
whole movie. Running out of ammo to
shoot at Alan with, Van Pelt enters a gun store, and you know exactly what’s
going to happen next: The Gun-Store-Owner-who-Doesn’t-Give-a-F**k cliché. He buys an assault rifle without a background
check simply by presenting a few Victorian-era gold coins and continues the
hunt.
This would be
more forgivable if the rest of the movie was a consistently engaging
experience. Unfortunately, while the
movie has some good ideas, once those ideas are explored and the characters are
introduced, Jumanji becomes False Suspense: The Movie. Almost every time a turn is taken on the
board game, what happens is that our heroes are attacked by a natural disaster
and/or wild animals. And because this is
a family film, you know no one’s going to die, so there’s no actual
suspense. About half way through it’s
just one five-minute episode of false suspense after another. It’s the type of tedium that you expect to get
through so you that the movie can progress until you eventually realize that
this is what the movie is. At one point
a pelican runs off with the game so that the protagonists have to try and chase
it down. In other words, a frustrating
plot-bung masquerading as conflict. Unfortunate considering the characters' chemistry is very good, and a lot of amusing dialogue comes out of that. Not
even Robin Williams’ charisma is enough to fully compensate. However, there’s one moment in the second
half when we get some refreshing creativity: the boy attempts to cheat the game
by dropping the dice straight down, and the game punishes him by gradually
transforming him into a monkey.
The chaos
has extended to the city bringing Carl (now a policeman) and Nora into the fray
(Nora stupidly exits her car for a better look an animal stampede). There’s a running joke in which Carl’s squad
car is progressively damaged until it is ultimately destroyed. I have a soft spot for old Chevrolet Caprices
(especially the LT1-equipped ones), so I didn’t find it quite so amusing. After the movie has had its fill of itself, it
allows the protagonists to finish the game, just in time to prevent Van Pelt
from killing Alan. In a surprising
twist, Alan and Sarah find themselves back in 1969 as children with their adult
memories. This is more disturbing the
movie seems to realize, and it unwittingly introduces all the paradoxical and
ethical problems of time travel.
The two
adults-in-children’s bodies decide to dispose of the game by throwing it into a
creek, a decidedly unreliable way to prevent its reuse. At this point all the loose ends are
apparently tied up in an oddly convenient fashion. Alan reconciles with his father, who submits
on the boarding school, and admits the factory accident was his fault instead
of Carl’s. Meanwhile, Carl’s new shoe
brings success to the company and himself.
Fast forward to 1995, Alan and Sarah are grown and married, with Alan’s
parents still alive. At a company party
they meet the children’s parents (Malcolm Stewart and Annabel Kershaw) who
express plans to go on the skiing trip that killed them in the original
timeline. Alan and Sarah save them the
trouble of dying by making them work through the vacation like bad bosses.
The movie was an adaptation of a 1981
children’s book and inspired an animated series. I watched a couple episodes and found it to
be vastly superior. It takes far better
advantage of the premise’s potential: instead of being attacked by animals in
most turns, a turn presents the kids (Debi Derryberry and Ashley Johnson) with
a riddle and transports them to the jungle, where they stay until the riddle is
solved. This allows the universe to be
expanded upon, and they meet various interesting characters voiced by Sherman
Howard, Tim Curry, William Sanderson, Charles Napier, Ed Asner, Jim Cummings,
and others. The show’s version of Alan
(Bill Fagerbakke) is and adult who’s been permanently trapped in the Jungle
since his childhood since he forgot his riddle.
My only complaint is that, for some reason, the boy must try to cheat
the game in almost every episode. The
show feels it necessary for the boy to get turned into a different animal each
time, so this little s*** never learns.
It’s not only lazy, but it actually makes the character less
likable. Aside from that, I recommend
the cartoon over the movie, which is the weakest I’ve seen from Johnston. The movie is one of those that Hollywood should be making a remake of: one with
great ideas but poor execution.
