One abandoned video game console. Four curious high schoolers in detention.

“Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” tells the adventurous story of four teens sucked into the mystical board game turned video game Jumanji and forced to take part in the board game’s story. The students all come from various backgrounds, ranging from the high school jock to the cliché nerds who are somehow always present in every high school. When entering the board game, they are given new abilities and forms. In return, they need to complete the game’s mission of saving the land of Jumanji – without dying before they make it back to the real world.

The cast features popular, award winning actors: Jack Black, Nick Jonas, Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson, and Karen Gillan, to name a few. Their acting experience as well as their relationship with the audience helps to boost the overall experience of watching the movie. This is one of the main reasons why this movie hasn’t done bad in the box office.
The movie starts out fair enough, introducing each character pretty well and showing their life away from school. The first scene shows Alex (Nick Jonas), who gets sucked into the game first. We then meet the four future Jumanji players about 20 years later. They all seem to suffer from problems in school, some acknowledging them and some being blatantly oblivious. When they all get detention for various reasons, they decide to play the video game they found, Jumanji, and get sucked into the game. The four players now have to race to finish the game, or die.

While “Jumanji” has been favored by the critics and U.S. audiences (it dominated the box office for more than four weeks), some felt the movie was over-hyped and sent mixed messages to viewers. For example, the movie’s trailer portrays more of an action movie than a comedy. However the movie’s humor dominates, and the action and plot are weak. In addition, the movie itself has many plot holes. For example, who originally gave the Jumanji game to Alex, and why did Alex have such as disdain toward them? We only see the silhouette of this mysterious character. The movie has a lot of space to twist the plot, but followed a cliché, singular story line instead. How did the video game end up with the school? While the directors might have decided to omit this information for the sake of time, the backstories could have had a positive effect on the plot.

Overall, “Jumanji” lacks in actual exciting plot as well as thrilling action, but it compensates with humor and iconic actors. In my opinion, this movie is great to watch – if you don’t read too much into the trailers and hype that has been published about it.