Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan and Jack Black are back for another round of body-swapping, vine-swinging shenanigans.
You won’t read a less interesting opening sentence in this newspaper, I know, but bear with me. Catching up with the movie several weeks and several hundred million dollars in box office later, I realized that my decision had been — well, not a mistake, exactly. But at the very least, a missed opportunity to weigh in on a surprisingly effective year-end diversion, a studio-engineered cash cow that’s a pretty good time before it more or less evaporates from memory.
As directed by Jake Kasdan, “Welcome to the Jungle” took the mysterious board game introduced in Chris Van Allsburg’s splendid picture book and upgraded it into a Nintendo-style console entertainment. Said game then proceeded to suck four teenagers into its virtual safari-themed world, recasting them as fantasy avatars played, in nimbly elastic comic performances, by Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan.
And speaking of obligatory: I promised at the time I wouldn’t overlook the sequel, and so, well, here we are. I wish I could muster more enthusiasm, and so, I imagine, did the filmmakers. “Jumanji: The Next Level,” directed by Kasdan from a script he wrote with Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg, is an amiable retread passing itself off as an upgrade.
The setup piles a lot of stuff you don’t care about onto a bunch of characters you may not remember. They are Spencer , Fridge , Bethany and Martha , four teens headed home for the holidays after months away at college. Spencer’s feeling bummed out, having recently split from Martha; on hand to offer him some crotchety counsel is his grandfather, Eddie, played by Danny DeVito, who starts applying the comic electrodes in his very first scene.
The game itself is determined to provide a fresh experience too. As explained by “Jumanji’s” long-winded non-player guide , the plot has gotten an upgrade, demanding that the players work together to steal an all-powerful jewel from someone named Jurgen the Brutal and his merry band of tundra-dwelling primitives before it’s too late. Beyond the jungle are new worlds of wonder — a desert crawling with killer ostriches, a gorge crawling with killer apes — to discover and nearly expire in.
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