Jumanji: Not the one with Robin Williams

Remember those movies that terrified you as a kid about innocently playing a game with your friends and then it turns into a near-death experience. It started with “Jumanji” (1995) when Robin Williams still ruled the screen. Next was Zathura (2005), and I had nightmares for about 13 years.
Apparently the movie industry thought it was a good idea to bring back that feeling of terror and made a new movie: “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.”

I’ll admit I was a little skeptical at first. I resented the idea that Hollywood was going to try (and probably fail) to recreate Robin Williams’ legacy.

The movie, directed by Jake Kasdan, follows four very stereotypical modern high school students as they are subjected to detention in a very cliched manner. The students come across the long lost game, Jumanji, and are then forced to play the game and need to win in order to survive. Honestly the entire movie was very cliched. There weren’t a ton of points where you were genuinely surprised by the outcome.

That being said, the overall movie wasn’t bad at all. When the students enter the game, they enter as the characters in the video game. This includes a very muscular and tall football player becoming short with no fighting skills, the hot popular girl becoming an out of shape middle aged man, the nerdy girl becoming hot and badass, and of course the nerdy scrawny guy becoming, The Rock.

The actors (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Jack Black (!), Kevin Hart, and Karen Gillan) worked very well together as they learned to get along. I’d give the movie a 6.8/10. Could be better but overall I enjoyed it and so did my family.

So if you’re bored and need a movie to see this weekend because you’ve already seen everything else worth seeing, “Jumanji” could be a good option for you.