RAMPAGING RHINOS GO EVEN WILDER
JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE 12A
MORE than two decades after Jumanji, starring Robin Williams, rampaged through multiplexes, Jake Kasdan directs an action-packed rumble in the jungle tailored to digitally-minded teens’ short attention spans.
The screenwriters pay affectionate tribute to the late actor, respectfully passing the narrative baton to a new set of wise-cracking misfits, who have an equally close encounter with a herd of belligerent, stampeding rhinos.
In the original, the horned beasts are unleashed from a magical board game and stampede down a quiet suburban street. Fastforward to the present day and state-ofthe-art computer trickery allows Kasdan to orchestrate an outlandish set-piece involving angry albino rhinoceroses charging down a malfunctioning helicopter in a canyon.
It’s a preposterously overblown sequence in a film merrily divorced from realism.
It relinquishes the childlike innocence of the first film for an all-guns-blazing assault on the senses, including humour that will be too saucy for little kids.
Computer gaming nerd Spencer Gilpin, football jock Fridge, cheerleader Bethany and bookworm Martha stumble on a discarded Jumanji video game while serving detention.
The high school pupils are sucked into the game, where they 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 reborn as acrobatic warrior Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan). Aided by a handsome pilot (Nick Jonas), they each have three lives to overcome the game’s myriad levels and defeat a menacing villain.
Johnson and Hart catalyse an amusingly fractious double-act while Black has a hoot channelling the sassiness of a classroom queen bee, including a standout sequence in which he tutors Gillan in the fine art of flirtation.