Jumanji

by Robin Williams (Actor), Bonnie Hunt (Actor), Kirsten Dunst (Actor), Bradley Pierce (Actor), Bebe Neuwirth (Actor), Joe Johnston (Director), Scott Kroopf (Director), William Teitler (Director)

Overview

Computer-generated action comes fast and furious in this special-effects driven fantasy adventure. The adventure begins in 1969 when little Alan Parish, lonely, picked on, and largely ignored by his wealthy father, a shoe manufacturer in a picturesque New England town, explores a construction site and unearths a mysterious, ornate box with the name Jumanji upon it. He takes it home to his big empty mansion and sees that it is some sort of game. His father returns home and informs the poor boy, who had been beaten up earlier in the day, that he has been enrolled in a prestigious boarding school. A fight ensues just before his parents go out for the evening. Alone and frustrated, Alan and his friend Sarah, open the box and begin playing the strange game. As soon as they choose their pieces and set them upon the board, the pieces become stuck. Sarah rolls the dice and her piece moves by itself. As it moves the great crystal in the center of the game board begins to swirl and a cryptic message appears. Suddenly the room is filled with giant African bats. Alan rolls next and finds himself encircled in a swirling vortex of smoke and he is then literally sucked into the game. Nothing the terrified Sarah does can get him back, so she flees. Over twenty years pass and a young woman and two children, her orphaned niece and nephew, are seen moving into the now-ramshackle Parrish manse. There the children hear a great drumming sound in the attic. Curious, they creep in and find Jumanji. They begin to play the game and suddenly find themselves beset by deadly blood-sucking mosquitoes, maliciously mischievous monkeys, man-eating plants, and a lion. Then long-lost, but now full-grown, Alan suddenly appears pursued by an ruthless 18th-century hunter. Banished by the game to live alone in the jungle all these years, Alan has become a crazed wild man. It is he who explains the sinister game that must be completed for the horror to end. After recruiting a reluctant and frightened grown-up Sarah, the hapless players unleash upon themselves and their town, untold horrors, including a stampeding heard of African animals, crocodiles, and a flood.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	0043396505612
Publisher:	SONY PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMT
Publication date:	12/05/2017
Edition description:	Wide Screen / Subtitled / Dubbed
Sales rank:	12,898
Product dimensions:	5.45(w) x 0.62(h) x 7.53(d)

Editorial Reviews

The imaginative children's novel by Chris Van Allsburg becomes this successful, if a bit too sour, big-budget action-adventure. The basic idea of Jumanji (1995) is certainly an inventive and exciting one: a board game in which a player can be literally drawn into a savage jungle world upon a losing roll of the dice. Where the film seems to go wrong is in having its milquetoast hero disappear for so long, only to reappear as a physically tougher but emotionally wounded adult played by Robin Williams. What this story needs is a sense of joy, of a small-minded town too concerned about appearances and normalcy getting its comeuppance. Instead, an underlying sense of tragedy (parents undone by a child's disappearance, other kids orphaned, childhood scars holding adults back from moving on in life) scuttles the whole endeavor. Director Joe Johnston has all the trappings just right, and the computer-generated critters are sufficiently frightening, exciting, and realistic. It's the film's somber emotional content that saps what should have been a wild ride of the giddy vibe that should have been fueling the trip.