No, no, no! I'm the old fat dude!
In pure dollar terms 2017's Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was the biggest blockbuster surprise of the last decade. Part of the reason was its deft blending of comedy and adventure, but more was due to how imaginately it subverted the expectations of everyone who had seen the Robin Williams original. Whatever the cause, the film's outlandish level of success meant that this sequel was destined to exist - only question, would it be more than a cynical exercise in wringing cash from the built-in audience? I can happily report that with the original creative team on board, Jumanji: The Next Level stays original and creative. It's also a lot of fun.
High school is over for our Breakfast Clubby quartet - and while three of them have moved on emotionally and geographically, geeky Spencer is in a hometown rut. Secretly he longs to be video game character Dr. Smolder Braveheart all over again. Thus when his friends arrive home for Christmas break, they find that he has reconstructed the magical game they thought had been destroyed and vanished inside it. What can they do but follow him? However the damaged game is playing by different rules this time. When Spencer's ailing grandfather (Danny DeVito) and the friend with whom he fell out decades before (fellow-Danny Glover) get dragged into Jumanji as well, virtually no one ends up as the avatar they expected. Add to that their new quest - one that turns out to be fraught with even more peril than before.
The big achievement of The Next Level is that it takes all that made its 2017 predecessor so much fun - the video-game tropes, the crackling banter, the sharp visuals - and mixes things up enough to keep them fresh. With the bickering protagonists of Welcome to the Jungle now firmly united in friendship, it's inspired to have them teamed with a pair of grumpy old men, painfully trying to explain the rules of what's going on as the usual Jumanji madness breaks out all around. And while Karen Gillen's Martha gets to revisit her Amy Roundhouse character (a move which grounds the potentially confusing experience for the audience), Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart and Jack Black all get to play entertainingly against their original types.
This plot device is never less than entertaining, but works particularly well in Hart's case. While Black was the most consistently hilarious character in the Jungle, this time it's the diminuative star of The Upside and Night School who shines, his high-pitched motor-mouth shtick replaced with something very different. And just when that seam of comedy threatens to reach exhaustion, the screenplay stirs the body-swap plotline even more. What is truly impressive - and a credit to the more mature actors - is how easily you can follow the thread of the teens' character journeys through a variety of video game personas. In other words, you never lose track of who's who, however break-neck the pace of the narrative, and stay invested as a result.
The rebooted franchise should also be commended for keeping a tight focus on character interactions, no matter how furiously the action hurtles along. The joke-heavy dialogue never lets up - even when our heroic band are fending off a vicious monkey attack miles in the air - and an impressively high percentage of their gags raise a laugh. Visually the sequel is a step up from before, with Laurence of Arabia desert vistas and craggy snow-capped peaks providing respite from the traditional Jumanji jungle. Throw in some great support performances that I won't even spoil and you have as satisfying a family-friendly advanture as you're likely to watch this Christmas and most others.
There's a concensus among critics that Jumanji: The Next Level is a solid sequel, complimenting but not quite matching Welcome to the Jungle, due to the underlying concept no longer being fresh. Well maybe it's because I came to the Jungle two years late with the surprise already spoiled, but I actually preferred this new one. It made me laugh more, it thrilled me more and - in its sub-plot of two older characters reviewing their life choices - it even moved me a little bit more. The makers should probably quit while they're so far ahead, but from the end-credits that's not going to happen. If they do go for the trilogy (and there's around zero per cent chance that they won't) let's hope the writers have enough ideas in reserve to re-summon that Jumanji magic. This time around it was so worth it.
Gut Reaction: I laughed, loudly and a lot, including every damn time Hart opened his mouth. On a few occasions I even got properly enthralled.
Memorable Moment: The mandrill bridge attack. One of those occasions that properly enthralled me.
Ed's Verdict: 7.5/10. A worthy companion piece to the first (new) Jumanji, The Next Level is a great comedy showcase for multiple talents and (occasional genital references aside) a terrific family night out. Pass the popcorn and enjoy the ride.
It's a lot easier to be brave when you've got lives to spare.
This time two years ago I was so absorbed with The Last Jedi as the big holiday family movie that I bypassed another little filmic entertainment - one that went on to gross nearly a billion dollars at the worldwide box-office. With its sequel now on general release, here at last is my Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle review:
The Gist: Four disparate teens in detention - so far, so Breakfast Club - discover a video version of the game Jumanji. That's the same one Robin Williams and a group of kids played back in 1995, only twenty-four years ago they were all dealing with a magical boardgame. This time around the players in question find themselves not only sucked into the game, but transformed into the avatars they so innocently choose. Thus nerdy hypochondriac Spencer - for example - becomes the unfeasibly muscular Dr Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), while his gym-enhanced fellow-student 'Fridge' is reduced to the Kevin Hart-sized zoologist Franklin 'Mouse' Finbar. Together these unlikely adventurers must find their way through Jumanji's various levels, fulfilling an epic quest before they run out of video-game lives, and developing a sense of camaraderie along the way. (See? The Breakfast Club with ravenous rhinos.)
The Juice: It actually worked in Jumanji 2017's favour that no one really cared about a sequel to the Williams movie. Expectations were so low that this revamp exploded into cinemas as a refreshing surprise. Chief among its plus-points is the comic use of a video-game avatar conceit. Johnson and Hart make great comic capital out of their role-reversals, Karen Gillen embraces both the irritation and the exuberance of a sardonic alt-teen dropped into the body and costume of a Lara Croft-esque bad-ass and Jack Black steals one scene after another as the high-school it-girl turned into - well - Jack Black. The bickering foursome with all their excitement, outrage and jokey banter form the story's centre, so that the special effects serve to enhance rather than to overwhelm. The script has inventive fun throughout with gaming tropes and succeesd in raising the stakes when it matters. It all zips along so that you don't even feel the two-hour runtime, nor have room to ask why the villains have independent lives in a video game. (Well they wouldn't, would they???)
The Judgement: 7/10. I'd been told for two years the Jumanji reboot was a good time and it didn't let me down. One or two dubiously adult (but nonetheless amusing) jokes aside, this is an exhilerating family adventure, which spins the Jumanji format into something fresh, funny and entertaining. Never more so than every time Jack Black speaks. An unexpected treat - or it would have been, had I not been so late to the virtual jungle party.
This guy's a real asshole!
Hobbs & Shaw is the first spin-off from the Fast & Furious movies, a franchise that began in 2001 as a street-racer version of Point Break and then evolved over two decades into a series of gleefully loopy action/spy stories. Taking its cue from the most recent Fast & Furious episodes, this new adventure is all about endless over-the-top stunts and broadly comic macho banter, most of the latter coming from Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and Jason Statham as the eponymous frenemies. Yes, this is at heart an old-style buddy movie - and if you've enjoyed the past few entries into the F&F canon, rest assured you'll get shed-loads of what you expect. Although it might be overload even for you.
The story - how to describe it? Luke Hobbs (LA-based cop played by Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Statham's rogue special-ops agent who's returned to the good side) are made to team up when a lethal virus threatens to fall into very bad hands in London. At the centre of the incident is Shaw's sister Hattie (The Crown's Vanessa Kirby), an MI6 agent who has fallen foul of a genetically enhanced super-soldier called Brixton Lore (yup, were going into crazy science-fiction territory with some very silly character names to boot). Brixton (played with villainous relish by Edris Elba) wants to track down said virus and set it loose, in the name of whittling down and resetting the human race along survival-of-the-fittest lines. Our trio of heroes have to outrun him long enough to neutralise the virus - that's if the two boys don't kill each other first.
There are a number of reasons why I thought this movie might be a fun, if daft ride. Johnson is a likeable presence who made last year's Rampage and Skyscraper - both of them summertime nonsense - worth watching. Statham is likewise good value (as proven most recently in The Meg), and the bolshy chemistry between the two had already been established in main F&F movies. Elba is a class act and Kirby a strong female counterpoint to all the testosterone washing about. Add to that David Leitch, an action director with the undeniably funny Deadpool 2 and the bruising Atomic Blonde already under his belt. I wasn't expecting greatness, but I did figure there'd be a genuine sense of fun.
And there is for about half an hour - slick introduction to the characters, nice bit of stuntwork down the side of a London skyscraper, everyone clearly having a blast as they trash England's capital in a variety of motor vehicles - before my old Fast fatigue set in.
I actually sat pondering why last year's Mission: Impossible - Fallout had me enthralled, while during this film I ended up staring unmoved at all the stuff going down on-screen. Both are jet-setting, action-heavy spy stories after all. The reason, I think, is a simple one. With Hobbs and Shaw, much like the franchise of which it's an off-shoot, there's zero sense of jeopardy. The stunt sequences are too frequent, too OTT-ludicrous, too CGI-enhanced, to provide any sense that the characters (or the world) could come to serious harm. There's also minimal attention to plot logic or the laws of physics - an issue which arguably counts for less in a comedy-action spectacular, but which here just further undermined any lingering reasons I had to care. What's left is a series of big set-pieces high on ballistics but low on tension, strung together by the insult-heavy banter. (Even that wears thin after a while.)
Okay - in the name of my recent Glass Half Full article let me identify a few things I liked. The film has a clear sense of style when it pauses long enough to let it sink in. The London locations look good. It's quite fun when the final act explores the Hobbs character's Samoan ancestry. An unexpected cameo during a plane-flight was genuinely funny. Vanessa Kirby kicks ass.
That's it, really. If I hadn't got suckered by the promise of big laughs and a thrilling, engaging ride, I wouldn't have felt so deflated by the end. Hobbs and Shaw only serves to bulk up my list of 2018 summer blockbuster disappointments. As with all things Fast and Furious it wants to be daftness as an art form. In truth it's just plain daft - to the point of tedium. Sorry, lads.
Gut Reaction: It did make me laugh a few times and there were a handful of awe-worthy action moments. After that, stupefaction.
Memorable Moment: Extreme abseiling.
Ed's Verdict: 5/10. Fast and Furious: Sound and Fury. Signified bugger all.
