Jungle Love

2017 closed out with two especially popular movies out in theaters -- Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. (Colons were in demand.) The latter certainly seemed like a fun ride, but not in a way that made me feel I had to rush to see it at the time. Instead, I recently caught up with it now that it's easily available at home. And indeed, it was a fun ride.

I know I've seen bits and pieces of the original Jumanji starring Robin Williams, but never the whole thing. I know I've read the original children's book by Chris Van Allsburg. None of this really matters, though, as there's really nothing to get "caught up on" here. The premise explains itself easily enough: some teens are sucked into a video game. And really, that's plenty for just shy of two hours of light entertainment.

That really is what Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is. It's light, not pretending to aim at more (nor really should it try). But it is a lot of fun. The movie leans hard into a variety of video game cliches, and generates plenty of fun for it. The jokes about cut scenes, re-spawning, weak NPC dialogue, and so forth never really get old. Yup, bad games are totally like this. It's funny.

Really, the weakest moments in the movie come when the script fails to follow this north star. It tries to build up a major villain using the techniques of bad movies and not bad video games -- giving us a pair of scenes with the villain that no human character is there to witness. Within the video game conceit, these moments should not be happening. And they're nothing but moments of pure mustache twirling, being mean to henchmen and displaying villainous powers that aren't used effectively in the climax of the film anyway.


The film's strongest moments come in watching the main actors play against type. Dwayne Johnson is the video game form given to the shy nerd, so Johnson gets to lampoon his own ever-confident, supremely manly image to great effect. Jack Black is the embodiment of a stuck-up, appearance-obsessed teenage girl, which is a comedic gift that keeps on giving.

The other stars aren't so much deliberately cast against type, but they nevertheless bring the funny. Karen Gillan gets to play a wallflower thrust into a Lara Croft-style video game persona, and does some wonderful physical comedy in adjusting to the change. And Kevin Hart? Well, I don't know that I've ever seen a whole Kevin Hart movie before, feeling that the cloying persona I've seen in trailers was more than enough. But I actually thought he was great here, and used in just the right amounts to be funny. Maybe one of his other movies might be worth a look some time after all?

I watched Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle fairly close to Game Night, and though I enjoyed both, I found a sharp contrast. Game Night tries harder to tell a story, and has many comedic peaks and valleys. Jumanji may not have had a lot of laugh out loud moments for me, but it did keep a smile on my face throughout. The two films took different routes to get there, but I'd grade both a solid B.