Rating: B-
Right now everyone is talking about Star Wars as it comes out tonight. Personally I'm bracing for overwhelming disappointment, not wanting to see my childhood favorite franchise stomped all over in a disgraceful disrespectful way, so I wanted to see something fun. Lighthearted. A complete removal from the world, and in this way Jumanji: The Next Level succeeds.
This latest Jumanji starts off with our previous senior high school students navigating the world of young adulthood. Everyone is fine. Everyone loving life beyond the game they survived. Everyone except Spencer who's struggling in New York. The idea of going back into a game he nearly died in would be a welcome departure. He returns home to find he needs to share a bedroom with his grandpa who's recovering from surgery. Spencer misses the person he was in the game. Misses the power. Misses the connection he had with his friends. In a desperate move he finds the destroyed game console and begins to repair it, and in the process all his friends with a couple new individuals find themselves once again in Jumanji, some more thrilled, or less thereof, than others.
What I loved about the last movie, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, was how fresh it was. Taking Jumanji from a board game to a video game was cool, the transition fun, silly, and innovative. In this latest installment we get more of the same. The movie is still fun and silly, but now it feels formulaic with some new twists, the story not as tight. The stakes don't feel as high for some reason.
I love the themes of family and friends with this latest Jumanji. Bringing in Danny DeVito and Danny Glover as Eddie and Milo was fun, showing friendship from a new angle, and another way to bring ridiculousness to the game.
Junamji: The Next Level is a good family film, though I enjoyed the previous films a lot more overall. Some of the "deaths" felt thrown in for the sake of removing "lives," and because of this carelessness, and a certain repetitiveness of plot, I felt wanting by the end of this film. Though, if you watch the end, they set up a possible new sequel that could bring freshness to the next movie, if there is one. I wouldn't mind seeing more Jumanji in the future.
MPAA: Rated PG-13 for adventure action, suggestive content and some language.
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