back in the game
A SEQUEL SOLID AS A YOU-KNOW-WHAT…
When I heard they were making [a sequel to] Jumanji, I was, ‘Don’t do it! Leave it alone,’” says Dwayne Johnson. “Then the other half [of me] was like, ‘OK. Let’s see what you could do.’” Just as well: Welcome To The Jungle clawed more than $930m worldwide, stealing a chunk of The Last Jedi’s box-office thunder and restoring Johnson’s fortunes after Baywatch. This time, he picked the right ’90s hit to reboot.
That said, Jake Kasdan’s film mostly feels like a Jumanji follow-up in name only. The original board game is binned for a retro gaming console that ports four teens to a magical jungle. More importantly, it also puts them in the grown-up bodies of four videogame avatars, played by four actors gleefully eager to make tools of themselves.
The refreshing upshot is that this CG-heavy adventure is actually a performance-driven, body-swap comedy in disguise (one cameo could be an oblique nod to genre daddy Big).
Playing a wimpy kid transformed into enormo-explorer Smolder Bravestone, Johnson toggles effortlessly between deer-in-the-headlights panic and flexing the People’s Eyebrow. Karen Gillan has hair-flipping fun as a wallflower turned Lara Croft-ian ‘dance fighter’, while Jack Black nimbly sidesteps the potential ickiness of playing a bratty teenage girl trapped in the chassis of “an overweight, middle-aged man”. True, Kevin Hart is pretty much his usual shouty, exasperated self, but he – like his co-stars – underpins the comic mugging with a giddy, guileless charm.
No one else really gets a look-in. Lost boy Nick Jonas feels surplus to requirements; Bobby Cannavale’s big-game hunter is a marginal menace; and the stars’ teen counterparts struggle with their share of the story’s drama. The action’s serviceable but there’s little of the original’s monkeyson-motorcyles visual invention. Still, it’s further crowd-pleasing proof that films riffing on videogames (Wreck-It Ralph et al) typically turn out better than straight adaps (Warcraft et al).
For such a monster hit, extras are light – and about as surprising as the choice of end-credits song. At least there’s another chance to see Rhys Darby’s in-game guide (delivering an in-character Making Of intro) amid the FX progressions and bromides (“We had a great time on set every day”). One of the five featurettes - Book To Board Game To Big Screen And Beyond! Celebrating The Legacy Of Jumanji - feels shorter than its title, while Black/Jonas’ mock-music video ‘Jumanji: Jumanji’ is a let-down saved at the 11th hour by Hart’s potty mouth. Matthew Leyland