Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)
Directed by Jake Kasdan
As the gang return to Jumanji to rescue one of their own, they discover that nothing is as they expect. The players will have to brave parts unknown and unexplored in order to escape the world’s most dangerous game.
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26 films that influenced Jumanji: The Next Level
What critics say influenced Jumanji: The Next Level
Everything else is a proficient retread of what we saw before, with newcomer Awkwafina adding a little spice and director Jake Kasdan ( Bad Teacher ) again doing a fine job channelling his inner Indiana Jones (his father, Lawrence Kasdan co-wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark , as well as The Empire Strikes Back ).
There are elements borrowed from “Mad Max,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “The Lord of the Rings.”
So is the title retro video game, ready to suck our heroes back into another magical adventure, this time one that resembles “Raiders of the Lost Ark” crossed with “Game of Thrones.”
Look, I cut my cinematic teeth on Raiders of the Lost Ark, to which these movies owe an immense debt even as they utterly fail to capture any of those Indiana Jones thrills.
Kasdan is the son of writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, whose writing credits include “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Add your own wisecrack.
Visually speaking, the cinematography of the sand dunes echo that of Lawrence of Arabia .
Kasdan also makes clear that he's not taking any of this too seriously, and little asides -- like a riff on the "Lawrence of Arabia" theme during a desert sequence -- underscore that point.
Yet for the most part the set pieces (which include giant ostriches chasing dune buggies and airborne encounters with snarling monkeys) have an enjoyable grandeur, emphasised by Henry Jackman’s score, which cheekily invokes Maurice Jarre’s Lawrence of Arabia theme during an early desert sequence.
It’s no longer just the teenagers learning life lessons anymore; now an elderly duo, sporting a “Grumpy Old Men” vibe (along with themes from “City Slickers”), takes over half of the show.
The all-ages spread stretches its predecessor's nostalgic, Breakfast Club -style premise to accommodate Grumpy Old Men -like routines: cue jokes about hips and hairlines.
This sequel swaps The Breakfast Club out for Grumpy Old Men , which doesn’t work as well, especially when the movie tries to do both at the same time.
We’re barely given time with them before they get sucked into the game, and their Grumpy Old Men -style dialogue gets old quickly, especially because we all know how their storyline is going to develop before it even starts.
It’s no longer just the teenagers learning life lessons anymore; now an elderly duo, sporting a “Grumpy Old Men” vibe (along with themes from “City Slickers”), takes over half of the show.
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While the scale of its success might have been a little unexpected — apparently it is the highest-grossing domestic release in Sony Pictures history, a fact I find to be hilarious — those of us who watched that trailer before every other movie for months foresaw that the concept was a winning one: Watch a quartet of cliché high schoolers straight out of The Breakfast Club (the Nerd, the Jock, the Outcast, the Debutante) get turned into the Rock, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, and Jack Black!
This sequel swaps The Breakfast Club out for Grumpy Old Men , which doesn’t work as well, especially when the movie tries to do both at the same time.
It was like “The Breakfast Club” with a 21st-century twist, where the nerd becomes Dwayne Johnson’s brawny hero, the popular girl winds up stuck in Jack Black’s body, and so on.
Everything else is a proficient retread of what we saw before, with newcomer Awkwafina adding a little spice and director Jake Kasdan ( Bad Teacher ) again doing a fine job channelling his inner Indiana Jones (his father, Lawrence Kasdan co-wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark , as well as The Empire Strikes Back ).
Remember when everyone wondered why on earth Universal would let Chazz from Airheads front a remake of a horror classic, and we ended up with Brendan Fraser's wild-ride take on The Mummy?
(Hello also to Romancing the Stone, and honestly what these Jumanji movies could use is some good smooching between people who are old enough to have their own credit cards.)
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Body-swapping, or character-shifting comedy, has long been a stunt that allows some virtuosic comic actors to rise to the occasion; think of Steve Martin sharing his body with the ghost of Lily Tomlin in All of Me , Eddie Murphy double-cast in Bowfinger (and quintuple-cast in other movies), or Tom Hanks playing an overgrown 13-year-old in Big .
Unfortunately, Spencer's grandfather, Eddie (Danny DeVito; Batman Returns /Johnson) and Eddie's former partner, Milo (Danny Glover; Lethal Weapon ) also get sucked into the game so Fridge and Martha have to explain to them what is going on while they all try to beat the new level of the game they have dropped into.