Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

I don't remember much about "Jumanji" (1995). Just that I liked it back then. I also don't remember much about "Zathura" (2005). Just that I liked it more than "Jumanji". I'm pretty sure I won't remember much neither about the new "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" (2017). Unless that maybe it's weaker than the first, and clearly below "Zathura".

The new version doesn't seem to be a sequel for the old one, but more towards a remake. The "cursed" board game is replaced by an old arcade that absorbs the players into a jungle where they have to save Jumanji (= the jungle). It's obvious that in such a movie you need to accept a certain level of "SciFi", but somehow the entire bit of grabbing/passing the players into the game seems a bit too childish... I don't know, the initial version, as also the closet in Narnia, or to be more close to the current setting the arcade in "TRON" seemed much more... believable. Anyway... On the good side, leaving the intro apart, the idea of a cursed arcade in which you're trapped has quite a potential to explore. Each player has an avatar in the game that is pretty far from the real form. We have a number of lives and the respawn concept. We have strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, even though the movie covers quite a bit of all these, it loses on the script. The jokes sometimes work, sometimes they don't. The dialogue has a clear age target in the range of 10-16. The story does not offer much surprise - the always present action is running from the bad guys towards the final objective to get the job done.

It's curious how the new "Jumanji" still managed to please enough the critics and didn't land exactly close to the trash bin. I assume it's more about politically correctness than how good is the movie. For instance "Journey to the Center of The Earth" in the same niche is somewhere at 61 on RT in comparison 77 here, and I think it's a bit better than this one. But well... as a family/kids movie I guess it works.

I would've liked to end 2017 with something better, but unfortunately I doubt I'll have time to watch any other movie and also write an entry until the 0:00 between years... so that's it for now. I have to notice that it's the first year, after 10 of blogging, when I didn't have a movie with the maximum rating among my entries. Maybe I got too picky... Maybe I got old and my chemistry with the new releases is fading... Maybe I don't have enough time to watch enough or to choose what to watch... Anyway, Happy New Year! & hopefully next year will be better ;)

Rating: 2.5 out of 5