Jumanji: The Next Level Review
PG-13: Adventure action, suggestive content and some language
Runtime: 2 Hrs and 3 Minutes
Production Companies: Hartbeat Productions, Matt Tolmach Productions, Seven Bucks Productions
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Director: Jake Kasdan
Writers: Jake Kasdan, Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, Nick Jonas, Awkwafina, Alex Wolff, Morgan Turner, Ser'Darius Blain, Madison Iseman, Danny Glover, Danny DeVito
Release Date: December 13, 2019
Sony has been known as the churning reboot machine of studios. When a property of theirs either flops or hasn’t been touched for about 5-10 years, they just reboot it! We’ve barely gotten over the shitty Men in Black reboot from earlier this year and the mediocre Charlie’s Angels reboot, which severely bombed at the box office. Come 2020 we’re getting a second Ghostbusters reboot. Sony just has reboots up the wazoo. Go figure, the only one they got lucky and struck gold with was Jumanji. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was one of 2017’s biggest surprises. It was fresh, clever, action-packed, featured great performances, and above all was FUNNY! Jumanji was so good that it made over $900 million at the box office and became Sony's highest-grossing movie of all time (before Spider-Man: Far From Home, that is). Of course, Sony commissioned a sequel and because it’s Sony, we were all hesitant. Not gonna lie, my initial reaction was as one Homer Simpson once said:
I’ll be damned that in the year 2019, they struck gold yet again! What the hell kind of universe are we living in where we received a sequel to two high-grossing Sony properties — The Angry Birds Movie and Jumanji — within the same year... AND they were both good?! Next thing you know we’ll have human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!
Years have passed since the last time we saw the new Jumanji crew. The four close friends have graduated high school and have been doing their own thing while maintaining a group chat (with Android phones… how unfortunate). The only person not so emotionally invested in his crew is Spencer, who now attends NYU while trying to navigate a retail job in NYC, and faces the banality of life while his friends Bethany, Fridge, and girlfriend Martha are just living it up. Now, as Spencer heads home for the holidays, he is surprised by his grandpa Eddie (Devito) who is there to stay with him. As Eddie faces his own issue of enduring an extensive visit from his old business partner Milo Walker (Glover), which is more of a pain than the hip surgery he’s recovering from, it’s revealed that depressed Spencer recovered the pieces to the Jumanji and sucked himself back in. His worried friends go back into the game to retrieve him. The thing is, Eddie and Milo have been sucked in as well and are under the avatars of Bravestone and Finbar while Fridge is stuck as Shelley and they have to deal with a completely new adventure.
Considering The Next Level is the second — or third, if you’re counting the original, which takes place in the same universe — installment of the Jumanji franchise, this picks up the pieces of the predecessor and adds further development that I gravitated more with. The set-up where the characters return to the game is rather well-developed. It centers primarily on Spencer again and seeing how sad his life turned after the events of the predecessor. He feels completely separated from everyone and you actually sympathize with him as his actions kick off the plot. Then, they establish an interesting pair of newcomers, such as his grandfather Eddie, who is just Danny DeVito doing his grumpy Danny DeVito shtick, and his longtime best friend Milo, which is also Danny Glover doing whatever Danny Glover does these days. The scenes between the two kickstarts the comedy, which thoroughly succeeds even as it translates over to the game.
Now, when we get back to the game, they add new dynamics to the characters that might seem conceptually cheap, but because of the cast’s incredible chemistry together, no matter what they tackle, it’s funny as hell. You have Johnson donning a DeVito voice and nailing it, even down to the mouth movements and facial expressions, alongside Hart, who dons a Danny Glover voice throughout. Since they share an extensive history, these two old-school geriatric dudes have fun under their masculine avatars and their banter just cracks you up. This further proves that Hart and Johnson are the major heavyweights of the franchise who carry the comedy. Martha is still Ruby Roundhouse, so she has to navigate the pair. Fridge is under Jack Black’s Shelley this time, which means — and I’ve always wanted to say this sentence — that Jack Black finally gets to do a Black voice and, as much controversy as it might stir:
It’s like Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder minus the blackface and you can’t criticize it because it fits the context of the story and the character is over-the-top like that so… it works! The entire cast maintains consistency with their new personas (except Gillan, who isn’t given much new material except to be reactionary. Whatever new stuff she’s provided with is brief).
Just like in Super Smash Bros, a new challenger approaches and that challenger is none other than Awkwafina, who also gets in on the fun. Not to give anything away, but she provides a new performance that furthers the range of traits she can tackle. I mean, she’s now Best Actress material for The Farewell and I’ll be damned that she has an emotional scene regarding a farewell.
One of the most appreciated aspects that The Next Level brings to the table is improving upon the flaws of the predecessor and adding fresh new weight. One of the glaring flaws in Welcome to the Jungle that caught many people off-guard was that it broke character by cutting to the antagonists, especially for a movie that emphasized on the format and presentation of a video game. Here, they maintain full focus on the primary characters — and only the primary characters — all the way through. It never cuts to this level’s antagonist (now played by Rory McCann for whoever dreamed of a deathmatch between The Hound and The Rock).
I’m still flabbergasted by it all. I did not expect director/writer Jake Kasdan and co-writers Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg (all returning from the previous film) to provide fresh creative ideas for this sequel to further explore the dynamics of these characters and add new humor satirizing the adventure video game tropes, all while maintaining the key elements which made the predecessor a total blast!
While Jumanji: The Next Level is fun and all, there is no need for this to be as long as it is. The film runs a bit over two hours and you feel the length. The pacing is oftentimes whacky where some comical sequences run a tad bit too long and tread familiar ground we’ve already seen in the last film. Like, we get it. Dwayne Johnson is significantly stronger than Kevin Hart. I don’t need to see Hart get his ass handed to him again by Johnson for the umpteenth time. It doesn’t matter that I had a hard belly laugh seeing Hart get bitch-slapped all the way across the desert. I know I’ve seen it before! Some of those comedic scenes are rather pointless and sometimes extensive. That being said, they still frame it in a way to make this feel like an epic adventure, which it is, and you get your money’s worth! Granted, by the third act it loses some of its steam, but it still implements new dynamics and fully commits to its idea that by the time it sets up a sequel in the vein of the ending of the last Jurassic movie, you’re pumped for it. Oh yeah, I cannot wait for the next installment and I do encourage you to stick around for the mid-credits scene that sets it up.
Not to get nerdy, but this is the Tomb Raider of Jumanji movies, which may sound redundant but lemme clarify. You know when the video game reboot of Tomb Raider came out in 2013 and revitalized the franchise and took everybody by surprise? Then, a few years later, Rise of the Tomb Raider came out and continued that winning streak, but better! They dropped the leads in new terrains on a completely new adventure filled with its own exciting set pieces that stood on their own to keep you enthralled.
Just like Rise of the Tomb Raider, or any good follow-up to a surprisingly good video game reboot (Sonic Adventure 2, Batman Arkham City, etc), Jumanji: The Next Level maintains the same exciting and thrilling fun and adds refreshing surprises to keep it as good as the first… or second… or third since they said Zathura was also within the same universe. Screw it, it’s just as fun as the predecessor! If not slightly better!
You are two for two now, Sony! Do not screw this up!
