Review: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (12A)

More than 20 years after family-friendly fantasy Jumanji starring Robin Williams rampaged through multiplexes, Jake Kasdan directs an action-packed rumble in the jungle tailored to the short attention spans of digitally-minded teenagers.
By The Newsroom
Published 22nd Dec 2017, 09:46 BST
JUNGLE ADVENTURE: Jack black at Professor Shelly Oberon:JUNGLE ADVENTURE: Jack black at Professor Shelly Oberon:
JUNGLE ADVENTURE: Jack black at Professor Shelly Oberon:

Computer gaming nerd Spencer (Alex Wolff) serves detention alongside three fellow high school students: football jock Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain), cheerleader Bethany (Madison Iseman) and shy bookworm Martha (Morgan Turner).

For their punishment, the teenagers have to clean out the school’s basement, where they stumble upon a Jumanji video game with four controllers and they are sucked into the game where the students take on the guise of heroic avatars. Spencer becomes strapping archaeologist Dr Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), Fridge is scaredy-cat zoologist Franklin Finbar (Kevin Hart), Bethany is quirky cartographer Professor Shelly Oberon (Jack Black) and Martha is reborn as acrobatic warrior Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan).

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The childlike innocence of the first film is relinquiahed for an all-guns-blazing assault on the senses including ribald humour that will be too saucy for very young children. Although the script pays respectful and affectionate tribute to Williams, overall this is less than the sum of its fitfully entertaining parts.

On general release