Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson have the best chemistry in Hollywood right now. My only request for the inevitable Jumanji 3¹ is that the two teenage lovebirds finally fall into those two bodies and The Rock/Hart bromance can reach its final form with a passionate kiss.
*My brain goes on a lot of tangents when I write. Instead of tough to read parentheticals I’m going to give MLA a go for the first time this decade and use footnotes. Good luck.
Jumanji: The Next Level reunites the whole gang from 2017’s Welcome to the Jungle including The Rock and Kevin Hart with Karen Gillan and Jack Black. Nick Jonas is there too for a little bit. I guess.
The best, and maybe worst, but definitely accurate thing I can say about this is that if you liked the first one, you’ll like this too. Inappropriate body swap jokes², CGI jungle adventure, and an unlikely group growing closer through peril are all back from the original. Missing this time around is the clear video game structure and originality.
1. This is officially the hardest movie franchise to number. There was an original Jumanji (1995), then a reboot of the concept with Welcome to the Jungle (2017) and its clear sequel The Next Level (2019). But Zathura (2005) is definitely in the games-come-to-life cinematic universe. So we should definitely just number the new ones EXCEPT Judy and Peter’s aunt/guardian/not-mom-cause-she-died-in-a-skiing-accident from the original Jumanji was totally at the end of The Next Level. With the same name. In a post-MCU world that means they are connected. Nothing is just a fun throw in gag anymore. Course they also reference a bar in Philadelphia to Danny DeVito’s face, so maybe it was a gag.
2. A girl was in Jack Black’s body in the first one and talked about having a penis. A boy is in Karen Gillan (pause for laughter) this time and talks about having boobs. Groundbreaking comedy.
Unskippable Cutscene of Introduction
Spencer, the main character and The Rock from the first movie, went off to college in New York and he doesn’t fit in. You can tell because he gets jostled by crowds in The Big City. Worst of all, his relationship, forged in the irons of shared experience in the first movie with Martha (Karen Gillan) is on the rocks. Bethany (Jack Black)³ is traveling the world on a gap year and Fridge (Kevin Hart) is a dedicated college athlete. The breakfast club is trying to stick together, but life moves on and they didn’t have a lot in common to begin with.
But now everyone is home for the holidays and it is noticeable that Spencer is avoiding everyone. And he isn’t the only one in the family reluctant for a reunion.
His Grandpa Eddie (Danny DeVito) is reunited with an old⁴ acquaintance Milo (Danny Glover) but there is clearly some unresolved tension in this relationship. Guess they’ll need a gripping jungle/desert adventure to work things out. Hey, it worked the last time.
Spencer had all the confidence in the world playing the game as Dr. Smolder Bravestone⁵ so he flees into the game, because that’s where life made sense. His friends are worried and try to follow him into the game to help, but the game wasn’t totally fixed after they tried to break it so this wouldn’t happen again. Fridge and Martha are sucked into the game along with Milo and Eddie arguing upstairs, but they didn’t get a chance to pick their avatars this time.
Body swap hilarity ensues.
Danny DeVito gets The Rock, Danny Glover gets Kevin Hart, Fridge gets Jack Black, and Martha stays with Karen Gillan. That is, until magic glow water gives them the power to swap characters back into who they were in the first movie.
Also Spencer, who was looking for the handsome confidence of The Rock, has to play as a small sneaky pollen-averse thief named Ming.⁶ Played by Awkwafina. Eventually Bethany tracks down Alex, the kid that was stuck in the game from the last movie, and they join the game as a horse and Nick Jonas. Yup. The horse in the posters is a playable character. And eventually the emotional punch of the movie.⁷
It’s more important to keep track of the characters than the plot or goal of the game, because that’s where the movie is good.
3. I’m way too happy about how “Bethany (Jack Black)” looks in writing.
4. You might could say Too Old. Danny Glover has literally been too old for this shit my entire life. 32 years since Lethal Weapon. Now who’s feeling old?
5. And looking like The Rock.
6. I’m pretty sure this is racist, but I’m not totally up on my Asian stereotypes. The name at least is racist though right?
7. It was a soft punch.
A Dude Playing a Dude Disguised as Another Dude
Kevin Hart harnesses old man voice to perfection pretending to be Danny Glover. He and The Rock lay the character groundwork with their interactions during the game and they are a perfect team. The shining and unexpected performance of the movie was when Awkwafina got her turn at a Danny DeVito impersonation. When they first meet her as Spencer she is good, but you can tell this girl was cast for her pitch perfect DeVito. I know Oscars care about actual acting and everything, but this is my favorite acting of the year. My other request for the sequel is more Awkwafina/Grandpa Eddie.
Unfortunately, the movie that all these great actors and funny characters are in, is pretty awful. The first Jumanji⁸ kept firmly to a video game structure. Things were set up and paid off. There was a forward motion to the levels. It made sense looking back what they were trying to do and how they got there.
The Next Level is all over the place with the plot and editing. And not in a cool side-quests-would-make-sense-in-a-video-game-movie kind of way.⁹ There are new weaknesses and strengths that rarely pay off. They are given a riddle to follow once and just keep applying it to all new situations. This is Jumanji. THE thing we know from the first-first 1995 movie was that riddles foretell the danger.¹⁰
There was also a ton of potential with the set up ‘what comes after The Breakfast Club‘. These kids don’t make sense as easy friends. After Don’t You Forget About Me stops playing, people usually forget about each other. That’s sort of the ending to The Graduate. This exhilarating adventure was fun, but now relationships take work. The resolution feels super weak because Spencer doesn’t come around until he’s back in The Rock’s body¹¹ and because the conversation is about 30 seconds on the side of a mountain.
A weaker plot but funnier characters. Take your pick, but people that enjoyed Welcome to the Jungle will be happy to be sucked into the world again.
8. Again. Welcome to the Jungle (2017). I forgot until opening the Wikipedia page for that movie while writing this, that it started with a kid finding the board game on a beach. Even though I definitely remember Jumanji ’95 washing up on the shores of France. Or at least French Canada. The one french phrase I know is ‘what is that noise’ and I learned it from movies.
9. Another banner idea for Jumanji 3. Come on studios I’m writing the whole thing for you here!
10. And Robin Williams was a gem. RIP dude.
11. Longest footnote of the day (thanks for indulging these) but this one really bothers me because Spencer’s flaw that launched the adventure was that he wasn’t confident in who he was. And this is reinforced when he ends up as awkward Awkwafina at first. College wasn’t what he expected, then when he comes back to the game that he loves, and it wasn’t what he expected either. But then without any intention or realization he gets to swap back to Dr. Smolder von Rock and he gets what he wants. Including The Girl, even though he totally ditched her and she is thriving in her new life. All this is to say nothing about the sloppy exposition Danny DeVito and Danny Glover trudge through to get to their character ‘development’. Yeah, for as much as I enjoyed the characters, they weren’t good characters. Ya know.
Jumanji: The Next Level is a Christmas movie and it’s in theaters in time for the holidays. Go check it out this Friday 12/14. And for thoughts on a more traditional holiday movie, see what we thought about Last Christmas.