- Shouldn't Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson have starred in a good movie by now? I mean, the guy has over 40 film credits to his name, so at some point you'd think that statistics would kick in. But no, the coin lands face-down once again with the pedestrian adventure flick Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle that, like so many of Johnson's other features, tries to cruise by entirely on the charisma of its cast. Granted, a cast that includes Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Karen Gillan, Bobby Cannavale, Marc Evan Jackson, and Rhys Darby is pretty darn charismatic, but wouldn't it be nice if the film surrounding them had been even 10% as interesting as its actors?
- The film's basic premise is that a handful of high school students get trapped inside a video game that they must beat in order to get back to the real world. Prior to entering the game, these uniformly repellant teenagers come across as walking stereotypes concocted by a crotchety septuagenarian, but their video game personas are miraculously appropriate to correct for their hideous personality flaws. As such, the neurotic gamer (Alex Wolff) becomes a muscular adventurer (Johnson), the dumb jock (Ser'Darius Blain) transforms into a weak sidekick (Hart), the insipid phone addict (Madison Iseman) devolves into a homely middle-aged cartographer (Black), and the shrinking violet/know-it-all (Morgan Turner) morphs into Lara Croft (Gillan). There's also a missing boy who becomes a Jonas brother, whatever that implies about his personality.
- Predictably, the best parts of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle arrive courtesy of Johnson and Black, both of whom excel at siphoning entertainment from the desiccated husks of weak scripts. Unfortunately, there's only so many laughs to be gotten from Johnson's "smoldering intensity" and Black's uncanny impression of a self-centered teenage girl. Gillan and Hart do their best with the material they're given, while Cannavale, Jackson, and Darby -- potentially hilarious actors all -- are completely wasted. The film weakly attempts to address real shortcomings of video games while simultaneously relying on some of their laziest tropes. There's nothing especially wrong with Jake Kasdan's direction, though, so let's just hope that he, Johnson, and rest of the cast aim a little higher next time.
