When I heard that Jumanji was playing in theatres, I first thought: Oh, yet another remake. Wasn't there a film named Jumanji made years ago? The one with the board game and animals? I vaguely remember watching it on television or something when I was a kid. Has Hollywood run out of ideas again? (My boyfriend, however, has not seen the 1995 film before. He has no childhood)
After doing a quick Internet search, I found that Rotten Tomatoes rated the 1995 film at 50% while the new one was rated around 80% (at that time), so I was quite keen to watch and it see how have they improved on it. On the whole, I was not disappointed. It was surprisingly entertaining. At certain moments of the movie, I gasped and held my breath to see what would happen next. During other parts, I was laughing together with everyone in the cinema, which was pretty packed since I watched it on Christmas Eve.
At first, I thought that movie was going to be so shitty. The story starts in 1996 at a beach, a reference to how the board game was discarded in the 1995 film. Somebody picks up the board game, brings it home and gives it to his son, who immediately goes like, "Who plays board games?" and goes back to his video game. And I was like, wait. What? Isn't it 1996? People still play board games, don't they? I would know; I mean, I grew up in the 90s! I had board games AND video games! Erm...
Later, when the kid is sleeping, he hears the drumbeats, and anyone who has watched Jumanji knows that that isn't a good sign. Every time you hear the Jumanji drumbeats, I would be thinking, uh oh. We're in the trouble. Sure enough, the boy wakes up and takes out the Jumanji board game, which has somehow turned into... a video game cartridge?
Erm... Okay... I had two misgivings about this. First of all, I didn't watch the trailers or anything like that. I didn't even know that they were remaking Jumanji until I decided to find out if there were any other movies to watch other than Pitch Perfect 3. I had originally wanted to watch Pitch Perfect 3 because, well, I liked the first one and I like Anna Kendrick. Although the second one was bad, I thought I could still watch it for Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson and other cast members. But it was rated 28% (at that time) so Jumanji seemed like a better option.
Anyway, since I didn't watch the trailers, I didn't know that it was going to be a movie about a video game. I thought they were going to keep the original concept of a board game coming to life or whatever. Secondly, HOW IN THE WORLD CAN A BOARD GAME TURN INTO A VIDEO GAME CARTRIDGE? This is why students are writing compositions that do not make sense AT ALL.
And to make matters worse, instead of FREAKING OUT like a normal person would, the stupid boy decides to insert the video game cartridge and press play. Yeah. In the middle of the night. Wasn't he sleeping? A normal person would just rub his eyes blearily and think, "Omg I must be dreaming" and just flop back onto the bed. But no. This kid is as cool as a cucumber and plays a video game in the middle of the freakin' night. No. This is unacceptable.
As I am still trying to wrap my head about how stupid the movie is starting to seem, we cut to the present-day where kids are using SONY phones (hello, product placement) to take selfies or whatever it was they were doing. I was still feeling EXTREMELY CONFUSED about the previous scene and so I felt like they needed to explicitly state that it was no longer 1996. But I don't think they did. Or maybe in my confusion, I missed it. I have no clue. But I was thinking, if their version of 1996 was different from mine (you know, the one where kids dismissed board games), then who knows? Maybe movie logic dictates that kids could have smartphones in 1996?
But okay, that wasn't the case. It's 20 years after 1996 and there are four annoying teenagers who get sent to detention for different reasons. Let's start with the boys. Spencer, a typical nerd, wrote an essay for Fridge (that's his nickname) who is some kind of jock. They meet in front of what they call a "freak house" and Spencer passes him the essay that Fridge was too lazy to complete on his own. They get sent to the principal's office because, surprise surprise, Fridge's essay sounds like the one Spencer wrote.
The two girls who are sent for detention are Bethany and Martha. Bethany is your typical blonde bimbo character who doesn't care about anything or anyone else but herself. She gets caught video chatting with her friend in the middle of a test (who does that?), loudly complaining to her friend about how this guy didn't like her photo (again, who does that?). Martha, on the other hand, is a rude rebel who tells her gym teacher that she doesn't want to take part because she thinks that gym class is pointless and she doesn't wanna end up becoming a gym teacher. Ouch. I agree that PE sucks, but did you have to be such a tactless bitch?
So apparently, as you can tell, I think that all four teenagers are stupid. Let's face it. At this point, I'm unable to like any of them. It's not because I've become a grumpy old lady. I know how I was like as a teenager but I still cannot relate to their so-called problems, apart from hating PE. I take pride in writing essays on my own, especially for History. (That was my favourite subject! Apart from Literature) And I wouldn't do homework for others because that's just dumb and a waste of time.
The four teens have to remove staplers from magazines that would be sent for recycling as punishment but since that's lame, they find an old video game console with Jumanji still attached to it. Since playing an old video game beats removing staplers, they decide to play and choose their avatars. I especially love how Fridge selected Franklin "Mouse" Finbar, thinking that he was gonna be a strong guy since he read it as "Moose" and not "Mouse". Bethany chose Professor Sheldon "Shelly" Oberon because he was described as a "curvy genius", but she ends up being a fat middle-aged man.
Instead of the game coming to life in the 1995 film, the video game sucks them in and they transform into their avatars. Martha becomes Ruby Roundhouse, a sexy martial arts expert who wears a crop top and short shorts in the jungle. Ugh. This always happens in video games, doesn't it? Somehow, the female characters have to be sexy even when they are badass! The same goes for female superheroes! And Spencer becomes Dr Smolder Bravestone, a tough guy who is played by none other than Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
I have to say that I love the casting. The actors really portrayed themselves well, as teenagers trapped in bodies of video game characters. Karen Gillan is stunning as Ruby Roundhouse. She also played Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy but of course, she was painted blue and her head was shaved, so she looked really different. With comedians like Kevin Hart as Fridge/Moose and Jack Black as Shelly the cartographer/Bethany, things became funny real quick. Bethany really stood out, since she was the only person who switched genders. Initially, she was annoyed by her own ugliness and disoriented because she did not have her phone with her. But she quickly became fascinated with her dick and at one point she was teaching Martha how to flirt and seduce men. And mind you, she was played by Jack Black. Naturally, hilarity ensued.
As they play the video game, Spencer learns to be brave and more confident. Martha realises that she shouldn't shut people out immediately. Bethany becomes less self-obsessed and in fact, quite selfless at one point. Fridge realises the importance of having a backpack. Okay, just kidding. Fridge was a big dude who became a little one. He hated it at first but he reconciled with his ex best friend Spencer and he probably realised that being strong isn't everything. I mean, he thought it was cool to be a brainy zoologist who was able to defang a snake. And because of game logic, he could rattle off facts and provide crucial information when it was necessary.
Okay, so in short, four teenagers who were trapped in detention were now trapped in a video game, and they had to work together to win the game in order to return to back to their normal lives. In the process, they learn more about one another and about themselves. Hmm. Sounds familiar? If you take away the part about the video game, it sounds like The Breakfast Club. Teenagers. Detention. Stereotypes. Self-discovery. Except that I hated The Breakfast Club. Absolutely nothing happens in The Breakfast Club. The only reason why my roommate and I watched it in Sydney was because of Pitch Perfect. Beca watched The Breakfast Club and she cried. Maybe she cried because she had fought with Jesse and she missed him. That's the only logical explanation I could think of, because after watching The Breakfast Club, the only reason why I would cry would be tears of joy. Finally! The boring movie is over!
Sorry, I digress. Back to Jumanji. In the 1995 movie, there's a man (Alan Parrish) who got trapped in the board game for 26 years (played by none other than Robin Williams). In this version, the kid trapped in the video game is none other than the idiot who decided to play the video game WITHOUT EVEN QUESTIONING ITS TRANSFORMATION IN THE FIRST PLACE. Ahem. He kind of deserved it. Anyway, the kid's name is Alex, and his avatar is played by Nick Jonas, who's supposed to be a pilot. The other teens realise that he's the kid who disappeared 20 years ago, which is why his father became an angry old man and their house became known as the freak house. Alex saves the four from a spot of trouble and brings them to his hideout, which was apparently built by Alan Parrish when he was trapped there! It was great that they made a reference to Robin William's character.
The five of them manage to complete the objective of the game, save Jumanji and return to reality. Oh, and everyone else in the game, like the evil villain and his henchmen, are NPCs. Rhys Darby plays Nigel, the guy who greets them and introduces the story to them. He also appears later on to shake their hand and congratulate them. (I remember Rhys Darby's performance in Yes Man as Jim Carrey's boss and he was so funny in that movie too!) As an NPC, he started repeating himself. Just like how Skyrim guards always tell you about how they were once an adventurer like you before they took an arrow to the knee.
Back in the real world, Bethany surprises her friend by saying that she wants to go hiking. Spencer and Martha kiss (properly, this time) and all of them remain friends. They find out that the freak house is no longer a freak house, because Alex was returned to 1996 and he had never disappeared. Like the 1995 film, there's this "time travel" component sort of a thing. They didn't travel back in time, but what the characters did changed certain things. Alex was seen getting out of the car outside his house. For him, 20 years had passed. He has his own family and his father looks happy. Alex greets the teenagers who are passing by and remembers their names. He even named his daughter Bethany, after the girl who saved his life. Aww!
It's best not to think about the "time travel" thing too much. Because once I did, I started to think about how Alex would have to purposely donate his video game console to his old school and hope that the four teenagers would find it. He must have done so, right? If he did not, would he suddenly cease to exist? Argh. Stories that mess around with time always try to wrap things up neatly but ultimately everything doesn't make sense. Apart from the logical issues in the plot (there is a limit to game logic and movie logic too okay), the movie was generally a good one.
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