Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing well. I don't normally do two movie reviews in a week, but I decided I'd watch Jumanji in preparation for watching Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle for Friday's movie review. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Let's get right into it.
Jumanji is one of those movies that I didn't grow up with but am very well aware of. I saw it when it came out on home video back in 1996 but it was just one of those movies that wasn't really part of my life. I also didn't even think it was that popular of a movie to be honest. I didn't really hear my classmates talking about it much either. Particularly those that were into film. It apparently did well at the box office but it wasn't super popular the way movies like Independence Day, Toy Story, and Titanic were. And yet, despite having only seen it once or twice when I was a kid, I feel like it was always around in a way if that makes sense.
Because it wasn't a movie I watched constantly, there was very little in the movie that I actually remembered from that initial viewing. For example, the entire opening scene in 1969 with the young Alan Parrish is something I completely forgot about. Mainly because I remember the trailer for the movie more than the movie itself and the trailer focused on the 1995/present day part of the movie, since that's where Robin Williams appears. In fact, the scene that stood out to me most from the trailer which I carried over to the movie itself, was when the animals come stampeding through the wall of the Parrish mansion. That's literally the only thing I remember from the movie and it's because of that trailer.
Aside from David Alan Grier, who plays Carl Bentley, the Parrish Shoe Company employee turned cop, and the actor who plays Alan in the 1969 scenes, I'm quite familiar with the cast of the film. Robin Williams and Kirsten Dunst are probably the two actors I've seen in the largest number of movies just because they were both everywhere in the 90s and 2000s. The rest of the cast are also people I'm familiar with. I mean Bebe Neuwirth was on Cheers and Frasier as Frasier's wife, Lilith, and guest starred in season 4 of Star Trek: The Next Generation as a Malcorian nurse named Lanel in season 4, episode 15, "First Contact". Laura Bell Bundy, who plays Sarah Whittle in the 1969 scenes, guest starred on How I Met Your Mother from 2010 until 2014 in like five different episodes. Bonnie Hunt, who plays Sarah in the 1995 scenes, voiced Ms. Flint in Monsters, Inc. and is currently reprising the character on Monsters at Work. Bradley Pierce, who plays Kirsten Dunst's brother, Peter, voiced Chip in Beauty and the Beast. So that's pretty crazy.
Before this viewing I actually thought that Jumanji was about Kirsten Dunst and Bradley Pierce's characters, because, again, that trailer focused heavily on them. However, the movie is actually about Alan and Sarah. Which is interesting because normally, these family fantasy adventure films that were coming out in the 90s and the 2000s were about the kids and the adults were almost nowhere to be seen. And I guess in a way it is about the kids, since Alan and Sarah start out as kids at the beginning of the movie and then revert back to that time period once Alan wins Jumanji, but for the majority of the movie, they're as adults.
I saw the 2005 film Zathura: A Space Adventure probably about seven or eight years ago now, and thought it was pretty good. Nothing special, but a decent kid flick. I had no clue that it was actually a spin-off of Jumanji. The DVD cover said, "A new adventure from the world of Jumanji" above the title, but I didn't even read the top of the DVD cover, so it didn't even occur to me that it had any kind of connection to this movie.
As I said earlier, I watched Jumanji on VHS once or twice when I was a kid because my grandparents had it at their house and that was pretty much it. We never got a copy of our own, I never owned it on DVD or on Blu-ray, it was just not a big part of my life aside from that one time or two times that I watched it at my grandparents's place. And actually I got the VHS in my current VHS collection by accident. So I was in Kingston, hanging out with Brad and Jonathan, three and a half years ago, maybe four and a half years ago, and we were at a store called Chumleigh's, which is a second hand media store where they sell books, CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, and VHS tapes. And with the VHS tapes you could get twenty of them for like $10 or something ridiculous like that. So I was going through the tapes, trying to find twenty that I wanted and I saw George of the Jungle, the live action Disney movie from 1997, so I grabbed it because I had that movie on VHS and I watched it all the time but hadn't seen it since we got rid of the VHS tape in the late 2000s or early 2010s. This was before Disney+ was a thing so I didn't have access to all the Disney movies that I have access to now, unless I found it randomly on DVD or VHS or something like that.
Then last year when my dad set up the VCR for me at the beginning of the pandemic I went through all the tapes I'd gotten up to that point to see if they needed to be rewound and to see which ones worked. I got to George of the Jungle, slipped the tape out and...discovered that it wasn't George of the Jungle but was Jumanji. Lesson learned. When you're buying tapes from, well, from anywhere really, always check to make sure the tape is the one that goes with the case.
I don't really have any problems with this movie. I mean there really isn't much of a story here, but it's not going for a real deep story. It's supposed to be a fun fantasy adventure film. Which is why I enjoyed it so much. Plus it was directed by Joe Johnston, who directed The Rocketeer and would go on to direct Captain America: The First Avenger. The Rocketeer is one of my favourite movies of all time just since I watched it last year for the first time. And honestly, I think Jumanji feels like the old fantasy serials from the 1930s and 40s in the way that The Rocketeer feels like the old Science Fiction and comic book movie serials from that same era. Which is pretty cool.
Jumanji is based on a picture book of the same name by an author named Chris Van Allsburg, who has story credit on the film. I didn't know this book existed but from what I can tell from the Wikipedia article on it the book is focused completely on Judy and Peter (Kirsten Dunst and Bradley Pierce's characters) with absolutely no mention of Allan and Sarah. Which makes sense because it's really hard to adapt a 32 page picture book into a 104 minute movie. There are other changes made in the adaptation process, but this is the biggest one since it makes the movie a very different story from the book.
Overall this was a really good movie and I had alot of fun watching it. If you've never seen Jumanji before, I highly recommend you sit down and watch it. Especially if you're a fan of Robin Williams, because he is fantastic in this movie. It's on Netflix for those of you who want to watch it and don't own it.
Alright that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for this week's comic book review. I'm not sure what I'm reviewing tomorrow, just that it's going to be a comic book. So until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.
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