The Game Has Changed (Kind Of)

People really seem to love the Jumanji films. While I’ve never been thrilled by the original 1995 flick, it has a beloved following among many from my generation. I find it flat, tired, empty, and filled with really bad CGI, but I guess most caught it at a time where the story seemed interesting and, if I had to guess, they’re viewing the film with rose-tinted glasses, remembering how fun it was to watch the film as a kid. It explains why, twenty years later (give or take) a “sequel” was released for the film. It does carry over some continuity, even if we’re dealing with new characters, a new adventure, and new lessons to be learned. That film, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, came at the right time to delight fans of the original film and their children, passing Jumanji on to a whole new generation.

Viewed from a certain perspective, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle has a certain cynical bent to it. Kids don’t play board games anymore, the movie seems to say, so Jumanji had to evolve into a video game (and off-brand console to go with it). People love Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, so instead of having him play a character within the movie, he basically just plays “The Rock” as a video game character (complete with “Smoldering Intensity”). Everything about the film feels engineered to work not as a movie but as a machine, to suck people in via actors and music drops (“Baby I Love Your Way”), and hooky video game mechanics, but it hardly feels like a real adventure. Of course, I have the same complaints about the first film (Robin Williams plus CGI animals in 1995 meant profits). I guess that’s just this series.

Two years after the sequel a third film (not counting spin-off, Zathura: A Space Adventure) came along. Jumanji: The Next Level was the first direct sequel in the series. It wasn’t just random people getting sucked, one way or another, into a game but the same people coming back for another dose of Jumanji action. As a sequel, the film has to find a way to come up with new ideas, new concepts, a new adventure for the heroes to go on lest it all feel like a stale retread. Unfortunately what we end up getting is a bit of a stale retread. The movie is funny, and pretty enjoyable in places, but it lacks much of the heart, the bonding of the central set of characters, that marked the first film. Good or bad, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle tried to do some stuff (even while much of it was engineered as a Hollywood blockbuster first and foremost). Jumani: The Next Level doesn’t try as hard or do anything quite as well the second (or third) time around.

The film picks up two years after the end of the previous movie. Spencer Gilpin (Alex Wolff) has been struggling to connect at school, having moved to New York for college. He doesn’t have friends there, but he also hasn’t really been talking to his old friends – Ser'Darius Blain as Anthony "Fridge" Johnson, Madison Iseman as Bethany Walker, and Morgan Turner as Martha Kaply – either. When he goes back home for the holiday, he can’t even commit to seeing his friends for brunch at popular eatery Nora’s. Something is missing in his life, which he mentions to his grandfather, Eddie (Danny DeVito), but he just can’t seem to find what it is he’s missing out in the real world… which is why he sets up the remains of the Jumanji machine the friends broke into pieces (at the end of the previous film) to try and get back into the game, where he felt good for the first time in a long time.

The next morning, while his friends meet up for brunch, Eddie has an unexpected guest: his old (one time) friend and business partner, Milo (Danny Glover). Eddie and Milo used to run Eddie and Milo’s, the restaurant that became Nora’s when Milo decided to sell so he could retire. Eddie has been bitter about that ever since, saying, “the restaurant was all I had,” and it ended their friendship. Milo, though, is back to try and reconcile. They’re having their usual fight when Spencer’s friends show up looking for him. They head into the basement, find the Jumanji game half-running, and realize Spencer is in there again. So they head in to find him, but only Martha and Fridge get it, while Bethany doesn’t. They end up with Martha in Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan), but Fridge is now in Shelly Oberon (Jack Black), Eddie is in Dr. Bravestone (The Rock), and Milo is in Mouse Finbar (Kevin Hart). The team has to figure out how to work with these new players and in different bodies, all while figuring out where Spencer is and how to save the world of Jumanji from a new threat because the game has changed and what happened before won’t happen again (except when it totally does).

The thing about Jumanji: The Next Level is that, in many ways, it’s a retread of a retread of a retread. The basic idea for this franchise hasn’t really changed at all since 1995’s Jumanji. Kids open up a game, get pulled into it (Robin Williams’s character spent thirty years, give or take, in the game in the first movie due to a bad roll, and the players in the later movies are pulled into it from the begging), random crazy jungle adventures happen, lessons about life are learned, and then everyone gets to go back to their old lives after. This third film in the series not only doesn’t change that basic formula at all, barring two of the new players being old men instead of younger people, and in fact it doesn’t even really iterate all that much on any new concepts introduced in the second film. It’s still a video game (even if the quest is new), it’s still the same characters (just with a couple of new additions), and it’s still the same rules. It’s the “Next Level” but it hardly feels like more than an expansion DLC instead of a whole new game (or movie).

Understandably, most sequels don’t want to stray too far from what worked in the original. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle benefitted from being a two decade-distant legacy sequel, with a concept that at least changed up some of the core mechanics of the story to fit a later generation of kids (although I do argue with the inherent idea that kids don’t play board games anymore). Jumanji: The Next Level, by comparison, was released a scant two years later (which is actually a pretty big rush in Hollywood time for a sequel), and there was only so much that could be changed up and revised with such a short window between sequels. With the same cast, same characters, and same basic ideas for the world, this third movie was bound to feel like an interactive update even with the best team working on it.

In fairness, while it doesn’t feel fresh, Jumanji: The Next Level is at least fun. Even while the film is going through the motions of the story, reminding us again and again that this is a sequel, an upgrade to the original game, it does still manage to work in a lot of humor to keep things lively. Having Eddie and Milo along for the ride, two old men who apparently haven’t played video games before (even though, come on, video games have been around for everyone since the 1970s and DeVito and Milo, both men in their 70s, would have been in their twenties during the height of the arcade scene so it makes no sense that they don’t understand even the basics of video games), does help to change up character dynamics. There’s a lot of fun to be had because of these two guys, their inability to understand being sucked into a video game, and their general old man crankiness.

I have to give extra credit to Kevin Hart as the actor clearly paid attention to Danny Glover’s acting style. Hart has to play a whole new character here, Milo-as-Mouse, and he does such a great job with character, inflections, and acting style that he does feel totally different. He’s better at this new role than anyone else (although Jack Black is decent at playing Fridge-as-Shelly, at least). The weakest, by comparison, is The Rock trying to play an old, Jewish man in his 7-foot-whatever frame. He eventually settles into the role, but the early going of the film for The Rock is pretty rough.

I think the best of the set, though, is an actress who doesn’t even get introduced until later. Spencer does get into the game but he doesn’t get his previous character, Bravestone. Instead he ends up in a new character, Ming Fleetfoot, a cat burglar played by Awkwafina. When she’s first introduced it feels like she’s just Awkwafina, but then the players all find a way to switch around their bodies, and Eddie ends up in Ming’s body, and that’s when her performance gets good. She’s so much better at playing an old man than The Rock is, and I loved her time as Eddie. It was great.

Eddie and Milo are also the main throughline for characters this time around. While the film opens with Spencer having a crisis, it then sidelines him inside the game, away from everyone else (and off screen as well). We can only really focus on Eddie and Milo at that point as the two (in their game avatars) learn to reconcile and get their friendship back together. These are great character moments, and it was clear that the writers – Jake Kasdan, Jeff Pinkner, Scott Rosenberg – relished having new, fresh voices to work with in comparison to the returning characters.

In fact, it’s pretty clear that despite all the characters returning from the first movie, the writers really didn’t know what to do with them. Spencer is sidelined for half the film, as is Bethany (who doesn’t even make it into the game until the halfway point and, then, is in the body of a horse and can’t talk directly). Spencer and Martha have a short reconciliation that gets them back to where they were at the end of the first film, while Fridge and Bethany have nothing new added to their characters at all. It feels like they’re all here because they were in the first movie and not for any other, real reason.

I think that’s the real reason why this film feels like such a retread. Outside of the new material for Eddie and Milo, most of these characters have been here, done this before. They don’t get to grow or change, just go through the motions from the previous film. Sometimes it’s the same motions, such as Ruby doing fight dancing again to “Baby I Love Your Way” (the same needle drop she danced to last time). Much of what happens feels uninspired, like the video game is spitting out the same kind of adventure, just with the scenarios remixed. It’s not as fresh, or as interesting, it’s just another round of Jumanji.

I didn’t hate this third film in the series. Hell, I actually did enjoy it in the moment. It’s fleet, it’s fun, and it has a lot of jokes, most of which land. But afterwards, I was sitting on my couch, thinking about it, and I realized that the whole affair felt pretty empty. It was a sequel produced by the Hollywood machine, designed to hit the same beats, the same way, and keep people “entertained” without actually making them “engaged”. I had fun, and I wouldn’t call the film a waste of time as it was enjoyable. But was it as interesting or involving as the previous film? Not at all. It was a pleasant way to waste two hours, just not in any way I feel like going back to again.