Video games have levels that are pretty similar. There’s an escalating series of people to fight, leading to a Boss. Jumanji: The Next Level, takes cues from the (now) video game its characters live in. The previous film was one of the bigger surprises of that year. There’s no surprise here, just silly fun times with all the originals, plus a little old Danny actors, and a little Awkwafina. Merry Christmas everyone!
It’s a year later, and all those high schoolers are now in college. Bethany (Madison Iseman), Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain), and Martha (Morgan Turner) want to meet up and reconnect during the holiday break to catch up. Spencer (Alex Wolff) was supposed to join them, but his life is much more mundane than his friends so he chickens out. Insecure, he reenters Jumanji to recapture his confidence. His friends figure out what happened, and try to go in and save him. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t choose Bethany, and instead chooses Spencer’s grandfather Eddie (Danny DeVito) and his former business partner Milo (Danny Glover) who were airing out their grievances nearby. Inside the game, Martha gets her avatar Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan) back, but Fridge ends up as Dr. Shelley Oberon (Jack Black), grandpa Eddie is Dr. Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson) and Milo is Fridge’s old character Mouse Finbar (Kevin Hart).
The joys of Jumanji are picturing the video game avatar actors playing the characters inhabiting them in the video game. In the first movie, watching the Rock be totally insecure Spencer trying to tell Karen Gillan he likes her was totally amusing. Here is more of the same, with more pronounced characters. Johnson’s Danny DeVito impression needs work, but when the Rock is doing physical impressions of an old man in a young man’s body, those jokes work more than they don’t. Hart fares much better, nailing that lethargic old man cadence Danny Glover has from time to time. Jack Black and Awkwafina get the jackpot: they get inhabited by all sorts of characters and usually gets the biggest laughs in the film. Jumanji also gets some freshness out of its character pairing choices. During the film’s climax, Dwayne Johnson and Karen Gillan are carrying the emotional arc of the movie. That allows Kevin Hart and Jack Black to get several scenes together, a pairing that uses manic energy of the both of them to maximum effect. In addition, unrelated, props to the filmmakers for throwing in a really great Easter egg I didn’t see coming.
The plot here though is Home Alone 2 in its mechanics, trying to do the same movie, but in a crazy roundabout way. The creative team forgets everything that happened in the first movie to reset its characters to justify why Spencer would reenter Jumanji, which every character knows from the first movie could potentially KILL you. Not good for making you believe in the main character in the movie. They also throw in the old folks into the movie to reexplain the rules of Jumanji to everyone. And identify strengths and weaknesses of each character….again. And find a character already trapped in the middle of the game…again. What I’m basically saying is if you didn’t see the first Jumanji, you won’t be lost at all watching The Next Level and you won’t even have to see Welcome to the Jungle, because the plots are pretty identical.
But in this Jumanji, you can see Awkwafina doing a Danny DeVito impersonation! If you buy into Jumanji’s lunacy, the movie is a fun chill ride that has some cool set pieces and funny nonsense if you think about the character impersonations. And thankfully, from what we see in the end credits, it looks like Jumanji 3 is gonna take the story in a much more interesting fun direction.