Jumanji magic sinks in desert
LACKING THE FUN
JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL (12A)
DISNEY will take over the cinemas again on Thursday with Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, the latest episode in the space opera.
With such a small window to display their wares, rival studios have taken to their bunkers but one plucky rebel has decided to battle the Empire.
When its predecessor Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle swung into cinemas it managed to take a fair few seats from the previous Star Wars film.
As nobody expected much from a follow-up to Robin Williams’ middling Nineties adventure, it seemed like quite a feat.
Returning writers Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinkner and director Jake Kasdan mostly stick to the winning formula. The same bunch of misfit students (played by Alex Wolff, Morgan Turner, Ser’Darius Blain and Madison Iseman) are beamed into another video game where they assume the bodies of Hollywood stars Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan.
This time, for an unexplained reason, the game has a Laurence Of Arabia feel instead of a jungle theme. There are two new avatars, Awkwafina’s thief and a black horse, and two new humans players join in when the magical game console sucks in grumpy grandad Danny DeVito and his former business partner Danny Glover.
To freshen up things, this time the humans jump between Avatars with Johnson and Awkwafina taking turns as little Danny.
Johnson’s New York accent is rotten but the rapper-turned actress, who recently got a Golden Globe nod for drama The Farewell, is weirdly convincing.
After a cringey stint pretending to be an African-American teenager, Jack Black resorts to acting like a flighty teenage girl.
The plot is a little disjointed and the action scenes are hampered by some slightly dodgy CGI. But while it doesn’t quite take the fun to another level, it manages to deliver a steady stream of chortles.