BEFORE: So here's what's going to happen, after today's film I've got just one more scheduled for October, then I've only got 6 scheduled for November, so I've got to go into a different mode, a near shut-down for a while. Maybe if I stretch out those 6 films I can keep watching movies until mid-November, but that still means skip days - one film every two or three days. There's downtime coming, no matter how I work it. But then I can come back in December and watch the last six, which now (thanks to one last tweaking) can feature three Christmas-themed films instead of two. I like the way this year's going to end, but the tougher part is having to wait for it. Still, knowing that through all the re-scheduling and re-workings, and theaters being shut down so ZERO films were seen by me in movie theaters this year, I'm still going to have an unbroken chain, from January 1 to Christmas.
Jack Black carries over from "The House with a Clock in its Walls", and I'm feeling sort of like it's 2018 all over again. I'm in the closing days of my year, with 12 films left and I'm starting to think about planning my January chain. Back in 2018 when I watched the first (OK, second) "Jumanji" film it was Jack Black who carried over from "Goosebumps", I had five films left to watch for the year, and I was starting to think about planning the chain for January 2019. History does sort of repeat itself sometimes.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" (Movie #3,095)
THE PLOT: The gang is back but the game has changed. As they return to rescue one of their own, the players have to brave parts unknown, from arid deserts to snowy mountains, to escape the world's most dangerous game.
AFTER: Yes, I realize this isn't a straight horror film, either - that's why I watched the previous "Jumanji" film in November, outside of the scope of October. But in 2018 that meant I had to watch "Goosebumps" in November, too, and that's quite clearly an appropriate film for Halloween. Thanks to my OCD that enforces the linking, I can't really make everything perfect, so the next best thing is to strive for close to perfect. I can get there by labelling this as a "dark fantasy" instead of a special-effects driven comedy film, because when you think about it, there's some dark force at work inside that video-game that sucks people's souls into the VR world and then makes sure that things don't go well for them at first. It allows them to "die" over and over, and it's strongly implied that if any of them should die three times, as per video-game common convention, they'll be for-reals dead in real life. The story never gets there, so we don't know for sure, and the characters sure don't want to test that theory. (Perhaps this will be explored in the probably-forthcoming sequel, "Jumanji: Game Over". But first they've got to figure out how to get Hollywood films released again, and Dwayne Johnson's got "Jungle Cruise", "Black Adam" and "San Andreas 2" coming out somewhen.)
I think I'm going to be very kind to "Jumanji: The Next Level", because it really ramped up the action, plus it gave me quite a few laughs today (and don't we all need that, right about now?) and then they added some really sentimental stuff near the end about friendship and old people being old, and I found myself tearing up a bit. So this one has all the feels, as the kids say, plus it's an entertaining thrill ride. There's a bit of a lag because it takes the new players a little while to come up to speed, because a couple of senior citizens (Spencer's grandfather and his old friend/business partner get sucked into the video-game in a new twist.)
This is a great change in the storyline, because if the same four teens (now college students) got sucked back into the same game and played as the same characters, that would be boring, right? And the one thing this franchise is now, it's the opposite of boring. They played around a bit in "Welcome to the Jungle" by saying, "What if the teens had to play against their types, the jock had to play the nerd, the nerd had to be the jock, the shy girl had to play the action girl, and the popular girl had to play as the fat, smart guy?" And therefore when everyone has to step outside of their comfort zones, and see things from another angle, maybe they can all gain further understanding and acceptance? Oh, if only it were this way in real life.
Now "The Next Level" comes along and says, "What if everybody has to play as a different character, and nothing really goes as planned?" leading to new comic possibilities, like Dwayne Johnson being forced to act like Danny DeVito (old guy in a strong body), Kevin Hart gets to bust out a Danny Glover impression (he makes this look easy), and Jack Black gets to talk like a black teen (umm, let's just gloss over that this seems just a bit racist) but in some ways, it's even better than Jack Black acting like a teen girl. The video-game itself got trashed at the end of the last film, but it got re-assembled and it's JUST a bit glitchy now - not so glitchy that it can't be played, but nobody gets to select their character now, and a couple things maybe don't work the way they're supposed to. (Did they try blowing on the cartridge?)
It's all part of a great attitude, which seems to be "If we have the special effects ability to make anything happen in a movie now, why not take advantage of that?" So even with all the terrible news of 2020, it's still in one small way a great time to be alive, because whatever the Hollywood dreammakers can dream up, more or less it can be done on film in some way. Take any big-budget special effects masterpiece, like this one or "Avengers: Endgame", let's say, and realize that these simply could not have been made ten years ago, not as well, anyway. Twenty years ago? Forget about it. The big-budget special effects movies of 2000 included "X-Men", "Mission to Mars" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", and they look almost ancient now by today's standards.
Of course, this film is not realistic at all - an old video-game cartridge wouldn't have two different full playable scenarios on it, there's just not enough space, let alone anything close to VR-level graphics. But who really cares when a movie is this much fun? And it starts out with very specific rules, the team has to solve THIS riddle, which directs them to go to THAT location and talk to THAT character in a specific way - but the rules get thrown out about halfway through, and it just turns into a special-effects free-for-all. It's more about what an old man would do in a young man's body (flex his muscles and punch everybody out) or what an in-shape person would do if they were out of shape, or vice versa. The world of video-games can be a great uniter - everybody playing the same game has to work under specific limitations, but it also can reward players who think outside the box and come up with work-arounds. And even though this is too fantastic to be believed, there are some underlying truths about how people need to work together to solve seemingly impossible challenges. It's not meant to be a think-piece, but in a way it sort of is.
There's one character that links this film back to the original 1995 "Jumanji" film, the woman who now owns the diner, Nora, was the mother of the two kids who freed Robin Williams' character from the board game, so the three "Jumanji" films are now part of a shared universe, along with "Zathura", it seems. Whether this will be explored further in future films is unknown. And it's a bit odd, but it seems that the street scenes were filmed in the same small Georgia town as the ones I saw last night in "The House with a Clock in its Walls" - which might have more to do with Jack Black's schedule than anything else, I'm not sure.
Also starring Dwayne Johnson (last seen in "Faster"), Kevin Hart (last seen in "Fool's Gold"), Karen Gillan (last seen in "The Circle"), Awkwafina (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Nick Jonas (last seen in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle"), Ser'Darius Blain (ditto), Marin Hinkle (ditto), Rory McCann (last seen in "xXx: Return of Xander Cage"), Danny DeVito (last heard in "Smallfoot"), Danny Glover (last seen in "The Dead Don't Die"), Alex Wolff (last seen in "Bad Education"), Morgan Turner (last seen in "Wonderstruck"), Madison Iseman (last seen in "Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween"), Colin Hanks (last seen in "Elvis & Nixon"), Rhys Darby (last seen in "Killing Hasselhoff"), Bebe Neuwirth (last seen in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days"), Dania Ramirez (last heard in "Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay"), Massi Furlan (last seen in "Bad Boys for Life"), John Ross Bowie (last seen in "The Heat"), Lamorne Morris (last seen in "Game Night"), Lucy DeVito (last seen in "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"), Jennifer Patino, Madison Johnson, Vince Pisani (last seen in "Stuber"), Derek Russo (last seen in "The Mule").
RATING: 8 out of 10 stampeding ostriches
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