Jumanji is a movie about a game that transports the game to you, or you to the game. In order for life to return as normal, you have to finish the game. The original version with Robin Williams was created in 1995, and if you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend watching it first. The majority of the sequel will make sense if you haven’t seen the original yet, but you won’t understand all of the references that are made.

  This new version of Jumanji is technically the sequel to the original Jumanji. It starts with the exact same scene that the original ended with, a child grabbing the board game from the beach. The main difference in this movie though, is that the board game adjusts to the new decade by magically turning itself into a video game.

When I first saw the advertisements for the movie, and realized that they had done this, I was initially annoyed. I thought it was dumb how they had to change the whole story, just because electronics dominate everything now. But, once I saw that this was a sequel, and not a remake, I understood the change in the game style.

Just like the original Jumanji, in the sequel someone plays the game, gets sucked in, and never returns. Years later, other people play the game as well, but they are not friends. The group playing includes two guys, and two girls, and each gets to choose their own character – which is how The Rock and Kevin Hart are in the movie.

Many of my favorite parts of this movie are centered around this specific character choice. If you have seen the previews on T.V., you know that one of the girls chose a male character. There are many cracks at this, and at how the male character is the exact opposite of the female who chose him.

Both that specific character and everybody else are faced with human eating hippos, cliffs, mad men wanting to kill them, and numerous other challenges during the journey in Jumanji. Like I said earlier, each challenge essentially represents a level, and they must defeat each level to win the game, and go home.

The catch is that each player only has 3 lives. In order for all four characters to go home alive, the players all have to learn how to trust each other, become aware of their weaknesses, and work together. There is a lot of character development in the movie, but it’s not as cheesy as I just made it sound.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. There is a lot of humor in it, and I did eventually end up liking the change in the game style.

    5 out of 5 Spurs.