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Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle Movie Review

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a 2017 adventure comedy film starring Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Karen Gillan and Kevin Hart. It is a stupendous blockbuster.

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“This is so cool. Because you have like a handle.

The fact that I’m not Instagraming this right now is insane“

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Yes, I just loved watching this film. It is by far the most entertaining film of the entire year at it is just pure, unadulterated fun. Surely, it thus lacks thematically speaking or in terms of message, but it is meant to be taken lightly and for entertainment purposes and in that regard it succeeds in flying colors.

The movie is a much better, modernized version of the original ‘Jumanji’. Whereas the original focused on a board game, this one focuses on video games which is very cool and exciting. It takes all of the stupidities and cheesiness from the first flick and replaces them with genuinely strong characterization and stupendously executed action sequences.

The film is basically a video game retelling of ‘The Breakfast Club’ so of course it isn’t particularly original, but it is clever in that concept and the execution is so good that it worked very well. Yes, these characters are stereotypes, but they are still mostly really well developed and likable that I’ve had a fun time with them.

Now I really liked the real teen versions of their characters but they only appeared in the beginning and ending. The adult video game versions are much more important. I have never been a fan of Dwayne Johnson and here he is thus my least favorite of the team. Surely, he had to play a somewhat different character than usual for him and he definitely did give a solid performance, but I am just not his fan so he bored me at times.

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Kevin Hart also is not my cup of tea. His humor annoys me and his shtick remains pretty much the same in each and every movie. But at least he had to play a somewhat different character here than usual for him. I certainly liked how the two were not typecast in this film.

Karen Gillan is awesome. I know her from ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ where she plays Nebula but she deserves a bigger career as he showcased obvious talent in both of these movies. Here she is sexy and smart, but also very funny and just so badass in her action scenes.

But the major highlight has to be Jack Black who made me laugh the most. He plays a stereotypical spoiled teenage girl and she played it for laughs surprisingly well. His gestures and most of his lines are hilarious.

Jumanji doesn’t have as strong of a second half as the first one is and I also found some missed opportunities here and there regarding possible humor and action scenes. However, they mostly made use of this world really well thanks to terrific world building and excellent attention to detail in recreating what it feels like to be in a video game.

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The direction is not the strongest, but the pacing is excellent and the film flew by how fun it is. The acting is pretty good and only Nick Jonas did not really bring a strong performance and was cast for his looks and fame alone. But others are great and the humor is mostly very strong. It’s easily the best video game movie since Disney’s ‘Wreck-It Ralph’.

Jumanji is basically the original 1995 film mixed with ‘The Breakfast Club’ and although its characters are thus stereotypical, they are still very well developed, likable and the interactions between them are amusing. Karen Gillan and Jack Black stole the show here as the former is badass and the latter is hilarious. The film has excellent world building, great humor and such a fun story. It is the best video game movie since ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ and it’s also the most purely entertaining film of the year.

My Rating – 4