Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
Rated PG-13
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Karen Gillan, Bobby Cannavale, Nick Jonas, Alex Wolff, Ser'Darius Blaine, Madison Iseman, Morgan Turner
Directed by Jake Kasdan
The Story:
Four high schoolers (Wolff, Blaine, Iseman, Turner) are serving detention when they decide to take a break and play a video game on an old system they find in the room they've been assigned to clean up. They fire it up, and the next thing you know, they are sucked into the video game, Jumanji. Now inhabiting their selected avatars, they must work together to beat the game and get back to the real world without losing all of their lives.
Welcome to Jumanji!
If you saw the trailers, odds are good that you thought the movie looked fun.
The movie lived up to the trailer's hype, and when last I checked, this movie was actually still playing in some theaters in America, even though it is now officially released on digital download and blu-ray and DVD.
This is sort of unprecedented in an age when most movies are coming out for download or purchase 4 months after they premiere. To still be playing in over 1,000 theaters and earning $850,000 when the movie premiered before Christmas is a feat unlikely to be matched...
Until Black Panther. :)
Now, back to Jumanji...
I've never seen the original.
Sorry, somehow it fell through the cracks, and I've never bothered to see it over the last 25 years.
If you're like me, don't worry, you're not missing anything. The movie sets up exactly how and why everything that is happening is coming to fruition.
I don't see anything that flies in the face of the original either, so I would assume fans of that one will enjoy revisiting Jumanji.
What starts as a Breakfast Club moment as the four teens that really have not a lot in common with each other prior to detention turns into hilarity as they each find themselves in the bodies of characters from the video game.
Naturally, each character is about as opposite from the kids in the real world as can be.
I won't say much more so as not to spoil any of the fun, but I would like to acknowledge the following:
1) Jack Black steals this movie out from under everyone.
2) The Rock and Kevin Hart can feel free to continue teaming up and making movies forever.
3) Possibly the greatest screen kiss in the history of cinema is included in this film.
So if you haven't tried it yet, I highly recommend it.
It's one of the few times in movie history you can find it still in theaters or available to watch at home.
That's pretty impressive.
Final Grade: A
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