Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle arrived in December 2017 as the third film in a series that began with Jumanji in 1995 and continued with Zathura: A Space Adventure in 2005. Jake Kasdan directed it from a script by Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinkner. It runs 119 minutes. Its tagline is “The game has evolved.” That is the whole pitch, and the film largely delivers on it — a board game remade as a video game cartridge, four teenagers remade as avatars, and a body-swap comedy wearing an adventure movie’s clothes.
Trailer, via Sony Pictures Entertainment.
A Board Game Becomes a Cartridge
The premise is the film’s best idea and its sturdiest load-bearing wall. In 1996, Brantford, New Hampshire teenager Alex Vreeke receives Jumanji, the same board game Alan Parrish and Sarah Whittle disposed of in 1969. Alex only cares about video games, so he sets the board aside. That night it transforms into a game cartridge. He plays, and he is sucked inside, disappearing from the real world while time keeps moving and his house falls into disrepair.
Twenty-one years later, four Brantford High School students land in detention. Spencer Gilpin cheated on an assignment. Anthony “Fridge” Johnson cheated too. Bethany Walker video called during class. Martha Kaply insulted the gym teacher. They find Alex’s discarded console, start it up, and get pulled in.
Four Teenagers, Four Wrong Bodies
The avatars are the joke and the engine. Spencer, awkward and neurotic in the real world, becomes Dr. Xander “Smolder” Bravestone, a muscular archaeologist with no weaknesses, played by Dwayne Johnson. Fridge, a football player, becomes Franklin “Mouse” Finbar, a diminutive zoologist and weapons carrier whose weaknesses include strength, speed and cake, played by Kevin Hart. Bethany, popular and vain, becomes Professor Sheldon “Shelly” Oberon, an overweight male cartographer, paleontologist and cryptographer with a weakness to endurance, played by Jack Black. Martha, quiet and cynical, becomes Ruby Roundhouse, a martial arts expert with a weakness to venom, played by Karen Gillan.
Three marks on their arms count their lives. Lose all three and they believe they will actually die.
The game has evolved.
The Quest, and What It Costs
The goal is to lift a curse. Professor Russell Van Pelt, a corrupt archaeologist played by Bobby Cannavale, stole a jewel called the “Jaguar’s Eye” and gained control of the jungle’s animals. The players must return the jewel to the shrine and call out “Jumanji” to end the curse and leave. Van Pelt is a reimagined version of the Van Pelt character from the original film; he is credited as Russell Van Pelt in the American version and John Hardin Van Pelt in the British version.
Nick Jonas plays Alex Vreeke, trapped in the game since 1996 and transformed into Jefferson “Seaplane” McDonough. Rhys Darby plays Nigel Billingsley, an NPC who guides the players. The film’s supporting cast does real work here, and Darby’s guide is the closest thing the movie has to a straight man.
Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart Carry the Load
The casting is the reason this film cleared $963 million and finished as the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2017. Johnson and Hart were in early talks in April 2016; Johnson confirmed his casting on Instagram that month. Nick Jonas joined in July. Black and Hart were paid $5 million and $10 million respectively. Karen Gillan was announced in August, after Johnson said the film would be a continuation rather than a reboot. Ser’Darius Blain and Madison Iseman were cast in September as Fridge and Bethany, with Rhys Darby, Morgan Turner and Alex Wolff following two days later. Bobby Cannavale announced his casting in November, and Tim Matheson joined in December as Old Man Vreeke.
That is a lot of machinery, and most of it holds. Principal photography began in Honolulu in September 2016 and ended in Atlanta in December. The film premiered at the Grand Rex in Paris on December 5, 2017, and Sony Pictures Releasing put it in American theaters on December 20.
Where the Film Sags
The comedy of mismatched avatars is a one-joke premise stretched across two hours, and the middle of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle knows it. The body-swap material lands hardest in the first act, when the players are still learning what they have become. Once they understand their weaknesses, the film has to keep generating obstacles, and the jungle quest does not always rise to the cast.
The action is competent rather than memorable. Kasdan keeps things moving, but the set pieces blur together in a way that the original film’s single living-room board game never could — the sequel has more room to run and less reason to.
How It Ranks in the Series
- Jumanji (1995) — the original, still the tightest premise
- Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) — the better cast, the looser structure
- Zathura: A Space Adventure (2005) — the spin-off nobody remembers
That ranking is not a knock on the 2017 film so much as a measure of how much it owes to the 1995 one. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a continuation, not a reboot, and it works best when it remembers that.
What the Film Gets Right and Wrong
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a likable, overlong, frequently funny adventure that trades the original’s dread for a video game’s rules. The rules are the smart part. Lives, weaknesses, an NPC guide, a quest to complete — the film understands that a game needs stakes, and it builds them into the avatars themselves. What it does not do is find a way to make the middle of that quest feel as urgent as the setup.
The cast carries it. Johnson plays the joke of a man with no weaknesses straight, and the film is better for it. Black gets the biggest swing and takes it. Gillan’s Ruby Roundhouse is the film’s most underused asset, a martial arts expert with a venom weakness who deserves more screen time than the script gives her. The sequel, Jumanji: The Next Level, arrived in 2019, and the fact that it exists at all is the clearest sign this one did its job.
It is not a great film. It is a good time with a good cast and a premise that mostly holds. For a third installment in a series that had been dormant for twelve years, that is enough.
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