Rapid Fire (Film) Review - Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.

In Realm Beyond Sight's "Rapid Fire Review" I hit the good, the bad, and try to get out before the review becomes too long winded. In this new review I take a look at the new Jumanji film; Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was a fun film but definitely not a blockbuster. I quite enjoyed it though and I really appreciated that this was a sequel rather than a reboot of the franchise. I really enjoyed that it plays homage to the original film and seeing the references to Allen Parish who was played by the late, amazing Robin Williams was very touching. To stay relevant to today's gaming culture the updated concept of the board game becoming a video game was nice. Add that to the fact that this time around it brought the players to Jumanji itself, it felt very fresh. The one thing that I will say however is that from the creatures and animals that come through in the original film, especially with the giant man-eating plants, I got a very more mythological  or wild sense of the creatures and animals that reside within Jumanji. In this film though I got more of a normal jungle vibe so it felt a little off to me personally.

I really like that the characters in the film took on the avatars in the video game. It allowed the actors to play a role other than what they may normally portray in a film. My hat goes off to both Karen Gillan and Jack Black who did phenomenally in their roles. Karen Gillan who is this amazing actress and stunningly beautiful plays a shy and awkward girl who feels out of place in her own skin. Then you have Jack Black portraying a teenage female within his own actual body. It was both hilarious and well executed. In terms of the story the film hits the usual coming-of-age themes that you would expect to find with a group of teenagers being your leads. Finding out about oneself and who they are. About love. Friendship. It was all very well done and really comes through in the cast's performances. On the other hand, the adventure side to the story is not too deep at all. It's a straightforward "escape the jungle" story with a mix of "learning as you go" thrown into the mix. Not too much to be excited about here.

One thing that the video game aspect of this film broke for me in terms of it being a sequel is that in the first film when Alan Parrish is sent to Jumanji you get a sense that he is sent to another world or another parallel realm. A place that was real. However, now in this video game everything is just a part of the video game. All the people that we see are just NPCs (non-playable characters) that are running off a predetermined script in the video game. So is this actually the world that Allen was in (which must be the case because of his reference scene) and everyone who was an actual person in that world transformed into a video game character? But then does that take their life away? It's a weird concept to think about. It just seemed like this video game world doesn't necessarily feel real since everybody's running off a programmed script.

One very interesting thing is that the original film's board game is turned into this film's video game. However, at the end of this film the characters smash and destroy the video game. Does this mean that they closed off the connection to Jumanji? Which could mean the studio closed off the possibility of having any further sequels since the game was destroyed? I'm sure if they really wanted to they could figure out another way to bring it back but we'll just have to wait and see.

RATING: 7 out of 10

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