Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

This is such a dumb movie but honestly that's what makes it so great. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a fun movie that doesn't take itself seriously and it shows. Of course it's a twist on the original Jumanji movie that will never capture the same magic. But for everyone expecting it to be a giant flop, it ends up being pretty fun.

3.5/5. Above expectations.

Fmovies: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a surprisingly incredibly fun sequel/reboot. Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Karen Gillan and Nick Jonas are all incredible and the film is consistently funny throughout and hilarious at certain parts. It's well paced and the direction by Jake Kasdan is great, resulting in lots of enjoyable action sequences. The music by Henry Jackman is really good. It's only brought down slightly by Bobby Cannavale being wasted in a one note performance as the villain.

All of the performers are fantastic in this film, and are perfect fits for their roles. The group dynamics are excellent, and they all have hilarious back-and-forths with each other. Some of my favorite moments in the movie are when everyone is simply standing around talking. Dwayne Johnson really shows his comedic talents here. While he does have a few scenes where he gets to show off his action chops, most of his role is comedy-heavy, and he delivers on it. Kevin Hart plays the same character he always plays, and more times than not it annoys me, but for whatever reason here it works. Maybe it's his chemistry with the other actors, but he's hysterical in this movie. I'm not a huge fan of Karen Gillan's character of Nebula in the Guardians of the Galaxy films, so I wasn't sure how she was going to be in this. But she delivers as well. Not only does she nail the action beats (and she has some of the best in the whole movie), but she also has some great comedic moments, comedy that I didn't know she could pull off as well as she did. But the true star of this movie is Jack Black. I thought he was hysterical in the trailer, but I was afraid that the concept of him actually being a teenage girl would get old and annoying quick, but it doesn't. Black is perfect for this role, and nails every comedic moment he's given. They are all fantastic together, and it makes for some great entertainment...

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle fmovies. I would say I gave it a 10 to balance out the bobo-heads with no funny-bone in their body's low scores, but no; this movie deserves a 10 and more.

Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle is a stand-alone, HILARIOUS romp which leaves the original in the dust. Heck, HILARIOUS IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT. Note that this is not to say that the original Jumanji was bad. On the contrary, it was great, especially for when it was filmed and who better than SIR Robin Williams, but in terms of laugh-out-loud good fun and non-stop smiles, this Jumanji far outpaces and outdoes the original.

While my BF and I have somewhat different tastes in movies, and he is not a Rock fan (he loved him as a wrestler, not so much as an actor), we both laughed SO MUCH while watching this. The Rock knocks it out of the park with equally stellar performances by Jack Black and Kevin Hart. What is even more fabulous is that it has kids humor, yes, but also 'thinking-people's humor' in the form of obscure little tidbits which are dropped here and there and keep you on your toes and grinning ear-to-ear. There is hardly any scene where you step out of the roller coaster ride of fun it sets you on from the moment they (and you) are IN Jumanji.

Do yourself a favor. Watch this, and if you don't laugh raucously at LEAST six times, seriously, consider what else might be wrong. In fact, if you read through some of the negative comments, you see the same old, bored, stagnant people complaining about it being "too PC", AND BLAH, BLAH, BLAH. Cry me a river. If you notice these people's other reviews, it is easy to see that anything that they consider too scary (read: progressive) to fit in the mold of their little minds and world, automatically gets relegated to the 1/10 pile. Shame.

In closing, this Jumanji gained a place within my favorite movies of all time, and the only thing which makes me sad about it, is that 1. I wonder if upon a fourth viewing (we saw it three times) through my 20th it will lose some of its luster; and 2. that it wasn't much, much longer, as I did not want the fun to end.

I would watch this movie two more times at least. This was a very funny movie. Arguably one of the best performance Jack Black has done. When I watched this with my family, in a packed movie theatre, I kid you not, the entire cinema was laughing during quite a few of the scenes. The humour is excellently tailored to the audience and is a beautiful tribute to the original Jumanji with Robin Williams. The way it fantastically coincides with the original movie and moves onto a sort of sequel to this is beautiful, and a rare thing these days. The movie is very funny and easily one of the greatest movies to have come out this year. It is certainly in the top 15 movies that have come out, post 2010, accompanied with the likes of Guardians of the Galaxy, Deadpool and now the recent movie that just came out, Bright. If you felt that Bright was also under-appreciated by movie critics, the exact same thing has happened here as Jumanji is a 100% gaurantee, a movie that will be appreciated after watching. Personally, I would watch it again and again with people. It is not just a movie to watch and discard, this is one to put on the bookshelf and watch again in the future. Loved it. Thank you for such a great movie with a fantastic and fun cast who clearly have great chemistry on and off the screen.

Reboots can be tricky. While some click, most of them crumble under the pressure to shake off the barrage of comparisons that would be thrown at the movie. Last couple of years saw such horrible reboots like Jurassic World, The Mummy, Kong: Skull Island. But much like Spiderman: Homecoming, Jumanji succeeds to impress the viewers. Jumanji gets a modern age makeover where now instead of a board game it is a video game. Four teenagers with varying personalities are put together in a detention. Here they discover the Jumanji video game and enter the world of Jumanji as their avatars. Then starts the fun ride. There are enough plot holes like how did the video game end up in a high school from Alex's freak house. The movie uses time tested cliche - Four teenagers with some flaw realize their shortcomings when (literally) seen from some other's point of view. But the fun parts of the movie makes us forget them, at least till the movie ends.

The movie does not take itself seriously, and that is a huge plus point. The plot of the movie is crazy, there are man eating albino (what?!) rhinos on one side and villainous henchmen with crazy mud racing bike skills on the other side. But such craziness has been ridiculed in the movie itself, which makes you fall in love with it more.

The bigger plus for the movie has been the performance of the lead actors. All of them have created niche for themselves in the film industry. Jumanji has used such niche beautifully and built very funny characters. Parts where Dwayne Johnson(Spencer) stops to admire his own physique will have you in splits. Not to mention his hilarious display of 'smoldering intensity'. Kevin Hart is Kevin Hart and Jack Blake as a women in a man's body is perfect. Karen Gillan, who is this mean Nebula in MCU, comes up with a very charming performance.

All in all, Jumanji is a movie that you can watch without any regret. It will make you gasp, wonder and laugh hysterically. It is definitely worth a watch.