One has to step back and shake oneself into believing that “Jumanji:
Welcome to the Jungle” is one of the year’s best films. After
all, the movie itself does not make this kind of demand on its
audience. It is marketed and feels like a good time family comedy
that aims only to please, not enlighten. But when a movie
accomplishes what it sets out to do so well, it is important
sometimes to try to deconstruct how it does what it does. There are
many levels to “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” and they interact
with each other seamlessly to an extent that puts this movie on par
with such other great comedies like “Hott Fuzz” and “Tropic
Thunder”.
“Jumanji” was written by Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna, both
alumni of the TV show “Community”. In particular, it was Chris
McKenna who was credited for writing the Emmy nominated episode
“Remedial Chaos Theory”. That brilliant episode, and “Community”
in general, works in much the same way as “Jumanji”. Here, like
in “Community”, the characters are deliberately stock characters.
We have four high-schoolers, a nerd named Spencer, a jock known as
Fridge, a mean girl named Bethany, and a sarcastic girl named Martha.
They find themselves for various reasons in detention, a plot set-up
that seems to deliberately recall “The Breakfast Club”. Detention
involves cleaning out the school’s basement, wherein the four find
a video game named “Jumanji”. Using the plot conceit of a
previous “Jumanji” movie from 1995, itself based on an early
1980s board game, the game comes to life as the kids are playing it.
In the 1995 version, the game came into the real world. In the 2017
version, the four are sucked into the game.
While in the game the four stock high-schoolers are transformed into
archetypical video game avatars that they unwittingly chose before
playing the game. The nerd is transformed into Dr. Smolder
Bravestone, played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and strong,
courageous, and intelligent archeaologist (think “Indiana Jones”
type). The jock is transformed into Franklin “Mouse” Finbar,
played by Kevin Hart, a side-kick and zoologist. The mean girl
accidentally chooses the Avatar “Shelly” Oberon, curvy genius,
thinking it to be beautiful woman and not a fat middle-aged man,
played by Jack Black, who excels in cartography and other sciences.
And finally the sarcastic girl is transformed into Ruby Roundhouse,
played by Karen Gillan (the blue robot in “Guardians of the
Galaxy”), a scantily-clad femme fatale (think “Lara Croft”) who
excels at Karate, Tai Chi, and Dance Fighting.
The video game they inhabit also has its rules. They have to work
together with their character’s strengths and weaknesses to find
their way through various levels, solve mysteries, and beat bosses in
order to win the game and leave. Anyone who has ever played an old
Nintendo game will immediately recognize the set-up. One of the
cleverer ways this is played out is through a character named Nigel
Billingsley, played by Rhys Darby, who serves as an explanatory
character that, because of his programming, can only say certain
things in response to certain things. This is annoying to the characters and funny to us.
Like “Community”, “Jumanji” uses cliches as a launchpad, not
a crutch. By using tropes, it constructs a base of familiarity which it then exploits by developing the story through realistic character choices. We can
predict how a stereotypical jock will react in a situation and we can predict how a stereotypical sidekick will react in a situation, but we
are less familiar with how a stereotypical jock trapped in the body
of a stereotypical sidekick will react. “Jumanji” presents eight
familiar characters within four characters and stays true to all of
them. Brevity is the soul of wit, and the rate of information thrown at the audience is amusingly efficient.
And how it does this is not just an achievement in writing, but in
casting and acting. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is so good at
playing a sensitive teenager that the shear believably of it is in
and of itself amusing. Kevin Hart, a diminutive comedian who
excels at large in-your-face comedy, seemingly didn’t have to
change his personality at all in order to believably play the jock in
the side-kick role, which in turn itself is a humorous take on his style of comedy comedy. But the best example of the possibilities of
combining teenagers with video game avatar is Jack Black’s impersonation of a self-absorbed teenage
girl. Not only is it pitch-perfect going one way, Jack Black sounding
exactly like a teenage girl, it is pitch-perfect going the other way,
a self-absorbed teenage girl inexplicably possessing larger-than-life
intelligence. Remember that the teenagers now inhabit the special
powers of their avatars. The Jack Black avatar Sheldon "Shelly" Oberon is a curvy genius.
This does not make Bethany less self-absorbed, but it does make her
especially articulate about her behavior in a way that is almost
never seen with this particular stock character trope. This is a great
example of how using otherworldly premises with their own special
rules of reality can help develop the character of a real person in a
way that regular drama cannot. Upon finding herself sucked inside a
video game, Bethany complains about not having her phone anymore. The
sarcastic girl chides her for being so self-absorbed. Jack Black’s
response is so exceedingly reasonable and well thought out you wonder
why nobody else is complaining about their phones being missing. Jack
Black’s acting in this movie is worthy of an Oscar nomination.
There is absolutely no chance of that happening because it is
unthinkable that this type of role would result in such a thing.
However, I would put this performance alongside Steve Martin’s in
“All of Me” as a performance so unexpectedly good, one has to
take a moment to realize just how underrated it is.
Finally the movie has great teamwork. There is not a character here
that does not have a good role and the movie, directed by Jake
Kasdan, seamlessly gives everyone something to do. Even the sarcastic
girl who was transformed into the usually thankless role of the femme
fatale, has her own touching developments. There is this one
particular scene where Martha and Spencer within the bodies of
smoking hot Karen Gillan and Dwayne Johnson act in the age-old
awkward teenager “I like you” exchange. It is just something
special. It is so recognizable, but as it is coming out of
middle-aged movie stars, it is also very funny. This movie is
something special and can be shown to anyone anywhere.
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