IT’S A JUNGLE OUT THERE...

Martha (Morgan Turner). For their punishment, the teenagers begrudgingly clean out the school’s musty basement, where they stumble upon a discarded Jumanji video game with four controllers. Taking a break from the onerous task of removing staples from old magazines, Spencer, Fridge, Bethany and Martha are sucked into the game where the students take on the guise of heroic avatars. Spencer becomes strapping archaeologist Dr Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), Fridge is scaredy-cat zoologist Franklin Finbar (Kevin Hart), Bethany is quirky cartographer Professor Shelly Oberon (Jack Black) and Martha is acrobatic warrior Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan). A plummy guide called Nigel (Rhys Darby) explains that the teenagers must combine their characters’ complementary skills to recover a green gem and lift a curse.

“If you want to leave the game, you must save Jumanji and call out its name,” trills Nigel.

Aided by a handsome pilot (Nick Jonas), the students each have three lives to overcome myriad levels and defeat a menacing villain (Bobby Cannavale).

Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle is less than the sum of its fitfully entertaining parts. Johnson and Hart catalyse an amusingly fractious double-act while Black has a hoot channelling the sassiness of a classroom queen bee, including one standout sequence in which he tutors Gillan in the fine art of flirtation.

Cannavale is a pathetic and ineffectual villain and Jonas is surplus to requirements but his chisel-jawed presence allows Black to fawn girlishly to scene-stealing effect and inject some unexpected homoeroticism to the testosterone-heavy tomfoolery.