m3review - JUMANJI

JUMANJI

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12/5/95

What is "Jumanji?"

It is a board game. A board game with supernatural powers and a terrible curse. Those who play it must complete the game or never see an end to the jungle perils it unleashes upon them.

The movie, JUMANJI, starts on a rainy night in 1869 as a pair of brothers bury a chest a mile outside of a small New Hampshire town. As they throw the dirt upon it, jungle drums beat from within the chest, calling to them. They persist, but when done, the younger asks the older, "What if someone else unearths it and plays the game?" The elder says, "Then may God have mercy upon his soul." [Lightning crash!]

Flash forward to 1969, when Alan Parrish, a boy of eleven or so, hears jungle drums at a construction site. He uncovers the chest and retrieves Jumanji. The game is so beautiful - a case of carved wood and with ivory pawn paths, animal-shaped tokens of carved onyx. What kid wouldn't want this game? (See note at end). He brings it home and shows it to his friend, Sarah. They settle in to play and when Alan rolls the dice, he is sucked into Jumanji.

Flash forward once more to 1995, when another pair of children - Judy and Peter - move into the abandonned Parrish family home. No sooner do they settle in than they hear jungle drums coming from the attic. No sooner do they investigate the attic than they find themselves playing Jumanji. The game begins spewing terrors at them, but it also sets free the vanished Alan Parrish - who has grown up inside the game. The three come to realize the only way to end the madness is to finish the game that was started 26 years ago. But that, of course, means facing all the dangers Jumanji has to offer head on.

(This is a lot more exposition than I normally do, but I found the trailer confusing and the commercials not much better. As far as you can tell from them, this movie consists of a wild man, a board game and animals running amok.)

So what is JUMANJI?

JUMANJI is a demolition derby. There is more smashing, crashing, blasting, and crunching in this movie than in any I've seen this year. The utter mayhem makes SPEED look as if it were directed by Felix Unger.

Do you remember those moments in JURASSIC PARK when your mouth just hung open and your eyes felt like they were coming out of their sockets? JUMANJI has a couple of these. The most magnificent was the stampede sequence. I was prepared to be unimpressed, but was completely blown away. You could almost smell the elephant droppings.

The sound was critical in working this effect. Industrial Light and Magic did a good job spawning a jungle of digital creatures, but I wasn't as impressed by the cyber-beasts as by the sound design.

JUMANJI is not a character driven movie. There is a dab of character development thrown in - enough to keep the story from being flat as a board game. It is not a movie for small children. Take kids six years old or under to JUMANJI and I guarantee they will want to crawl into bed with mom and dad until they are 18. There were some kids in the audience at tonight's screening, and they seemed no worse for wear, but they all seemed to be eight or older.

JUMANJI is not an actor's movie, but there were no bad performances. Robin Williams plays the grown-up Alan. Kirsten Dunst (the vampirette of INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE) plays Judy. Bebe Neuwirth (Lilith from TV's "Cheers") is Judy and Peter's aunt. David Alan Greir (of TV's "In Living Color") plays a cop who spends the movie trying to get to the bottom of the weirdness. And Bonnie Hunt plays the grown-up Sarah. Bonnie was the mother in the BEETHOVEN movies and the best friend to Marisa Tomei's character in ONLY YOU. I like her - she's funny.

JUMANJI draws a lot of laughs both from witty scripting and roller coaster excitement. But the emphasis is on the roller coaster. This movie is Busch Gardens, not the Comic Strip.

If you are at all inclined toward seeing this kind of movie, see it and see it on the big screen - preferably fifth row from the front in a theatre with digital sound. You'll have a blast.

Note:

When I first saw the trailer for JUMANJI, I said to myself, "How shameless! They're making a movie to promote a new board game. I wonder which will be greater, the box office receipts or the toy store receipts." But having seen the movie, I now wonder how they could expect to sell the board game? What good is it if a kid rolls the dice and nothing comes smashing through the walls? [back to review]

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