Jumanji: The Next Level | Little White Lies

Juman­ji: The Next Level

12 Dec 2019 / Released: 13 Dec 2019

Words by Hannah Strong

Directed by Jake Kasdan

Starring Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, and Kevin Hart

Three people standing in a dark room, a man with grey hair and a beard wearing a green jacket, a young woman with dark hair wearing a red jacket, and a young man with dark hair wearing black clothing.
Three people standing in a dark room, a man with grey hair and a beard wearing a green jacket, a young woman with dark hair wearing a red jacket, and a young man with dark hair wearing black clothing.
2

Anticipation.

Why didn’t they call it 2manji?

2

Enjoyment.

Weird amount of penis jokes for a kids’ movie.

2

In Retrospect.

Hart and Johnson raise a few laughs. That’s about it.

The gang gets a sequel… Dan­ny DeVi­to and Awk­wa­fi­na join the cast of this glossy fan­ta­sy adventure.

It’s Awkwafina’s world, we’re just liv­ing in it. After steal­ing the show in Ocean’s 8 and Crazy Rich Asians in 2018, this year saw her become a glob­al sen­sa­tion thanks to her star turn in Lulu Wang’s mov­ing por­trait of a Chi­nese-Amer­i­can fam­i­ly in the flux, The Farewell. As such, it’s a pleas­ant sur­prise when she pops up mid-way through this lack­lus­tre Juman­ji reboot-sequel (bootquel?) – until it becomes appar­ent the film has absolute­ly no idea what to do with her.

This is a recur­ring prob­lem in glossy, star-filled reboots/​sheboots/​sequels/​threequels: front-loaded with so much tal­ent, it’s a scram­ble to give every­one enough to do. As was the case in Juman­ji: Wel­come to the Jun­gle, Dwayne John­son and Kevin Hart take the lion’s share of the action again, while Karen Gillan is reduced to doing exact­ly the same thing as before (play­ing a sexy dan­cy fighty lady) and Jack Black repris­es his role as a grown man imper­son­at­ing a teenage girl.

A cou­ple of years after the events of the pre­vi­ous film, the four friends ini­tial­ly sucked into the Juman­ji video game must return to res­cue one of their own – but the twist this time is that they’re unwit­ting­ly accom­pa­nied by geri­atric cur­mud­geon Eddie (Dan­ny DeVi­to) and his dron­ing fren­e­my Milo (Dan­ny Glover). As is the nature of Juman­ji, once inside the game, the char­ac­ters become avatars, which means Dwayne John­son adopts the vocal and phys­i­cal ticks of DeVi­to, and Hart of Glover.

Group of adventurers in desert setting, wearing khaki and combat-style clothing, standing beside off-road vehicles.

John­son and Hart’s imper­son­ations of two Hol­ly­wood icons are gen­uine­ly enter­tain­ing, although the deci­sion to have Jack Black mim­ic an African-Amer­i­can char­ac­ter ear­ly in the film feels mis­guid­ed. So too do the jokes about horse penis­es and eunuchs. Par­ents, good luck explain­ing those to your kids.

There’s a gener­ic mes­sage about the pow­er of friend­ship swirling around, but much like Rory McCann’s bare­ly-there vil­lain Jur­gen the Bru­tal, it seems to come as an after­thought, lazi­ly slapped on in a half-heart­ed attempt at giv­ing deep­er mean­ing to the slap­stick antics which bare­ly make sense with­in the dream log­ic of a fan­ta­sy film.

If Hol­ly­wood is going to insist on recy­cling old prop­er­ties (see you soon, Ghost­busters and Die Hard!), the least they could do is try to make it inter­est­ing for audiences.

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