Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)

It’s weird that the most successful video game movies to date aren’t based on video games at all.
I’ve previously mentioned that “John Wick: Parabellum” (2019) was the ultimate ‘first person shooter’ game, which makes the new “Jumanji” movies (2017/2019) the best ‘multiplayer adventure’ title, which you could compare to anything from ‘New Super Mario Bros’ to ‘Destiny 2.’
And really, the success of those videogame-movies-sans-videogames is the fact that they don’t have a source material.
“Jumanji: The Next Level” (2019) didn’t have to worry about an actual game. The writers and director didn’t have to look at someone’s software and try to figure out if there were in-game metrics or physics or lore or whatever that they’d have to shoe-horn into their movie. They took the concepts that we recognize - cut scenes, NPCs, character abilities - and molded them to help tell the kind of story they wanted to tell and that could be told effectively on the big screen.

That said: if you saw the 2017 movie, then you’ll know pretty much exactly how this one goes: a bunch of people got sucked into ‘digital Jumanji’ (far more pleasant place than the 1995 iteration), there was a gemstone macguffin they had to save from a cartoonish supervillain, and the characters all learned a valuable lesson about inner strength or friendship or whatever.
Is it similar? Yes. But that’s okay. There’s a reason there are four ‘Borderlands’ games all focused around the exact same premise.

We were reunited with the original leads: Spencer (Alex Wolff), Martha (Morgan Turner), Fridge (Ser'Darius Blain ), Bethany (Madison Iseman), and Alex (Colin Hanks), along with newcomers Eddie (Danny DeVito) and Milo (Danny Glover).
Martha, Fridge and Bethany seemed to have retained their character development from the last movie, so there wasn’t much for them to do here, while Spencer had an impressive bout of self-doubt that required him to re-navigate his character arc, which was kinda boring.

The avatars for the first game came back too: Dr. Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), Mouse (Kevin Hart), Oberon (Jack Black), Ruby (Karen Gillan), and Seaplane (Nick Jonas), with the addition of Ming (Awkwafina).

The major change with this movie was that everyone got a different avatar except Martha. Fridge ended up as Oberon instead of Mouse. Bethany was a horse. Spencer thought he’d get Bravestone but got Ming. Meanwhile, Eddie and Milo, two old men who’d never played video games, got Bravestone and Mouse.
This meant that Dwayne Johnson had to spend a huge chunk of the movie doing his best Danny DeVito impersonation, while Kevin Hart practiced the only non-Kevin-Hart role I’ve ever seen him do: a calm old man.
It was pretty entertaining watching two “old” men try to navigate an immersive video game world, and Johnson and Hart did an outstanding job with their alternate character impressions.

That said: I’ve been binge-watching “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” during this lockdown, and now it’s impossible for me to watch DeVito as anything other than human-train-wreck character of Frank Reynolds.

The A Plot was about finding and recovering the gem, obviously.
Twin B Plots were about Spencer’s redevelopment and a fractured friendship between Eddie and Milo.
Apparently they’d owned and run a restaurant for decades and something went sideways and Eddie never let it go.
I’m glad that one of the subplots differed from the first movie, otherwise this would have been far too similar. However, as a point of conflict, it went on way too long. I don’t think it got resolved until the third act, and when it did, the resolution didn’t feel cathartic compared to the amount of time dedicated to showing said issue and the inter-character conflict it createrd.

The set pieces were gorgeous. There was a frozen mountain fortress, a street market, a jungle, all of which looked incredible, like the film crew either built or traveled to go get those shots.
The CGI, however, was not gorgeous. Whenever someone got punched or thrown or otherwise moved in a way that had to be created digitally, it was painfully obvious.
I’m not complaining that videogame physics are weird - I get that and expect it. I’ve played plenty of games where a punch can send my opponent flying, or a shotgun blast makes a body rag doll up a hill. That’s fine, and the inclusion of those types of physics makes sense. My issue was simply that the studio skimped on the render farm.

When I reviewed “Zombieland: Double Tap” (2019), I pointed out that a ten-years-later sequel didn’t have the option to bring up a specific character action without re-explanation, because a decade is far too long to have to remember something so small from the previous movie.
This movie did the same thing and had the same problem, despite only being two years different: Ruby had a fight-dance ability. While she could kick and punch normally, when music was playing she could do some magnificently choreographed face-kicking. In the 2017 movie they discovered the power by accident, and in this one Mouse simply pulled out a boombox and Ruby started kicking away. While Megan remembered that particular power, I was momentarily nonplussed by the scene, and if you’re someone who didn’t see (or don’t remember) the first movie, the transition wouldn’t have made any sense as there’s zero context for it or reason for you to know that Ruby had that skill set.
Mouse could have smoothed it over by simply saying “Wait! You can fight-dance! I’ve got something for this!” and then the scene would have been immediately clarified. But they didn’t, so I hope you remember watching the first one.

There were two additional plot devices in this: a magic fruit and a body-swapping pool of lightning water.
The fruit made sense - games with quests often have side-quests or additional items you have to pick up to make them work. Got it. The ultimate application didn’t make sense, but video games aren’t necessarily known for spoon-feeding item details to the players, so I can accept it.
The pool felt like it was added to resolve a problem in the laziest way possible. Its initial display on-screen felt like they were just fluffing the run time, and the return happened exactly when the characters needed it to, like a tame version of a Deus Ex Machina. Technically it fit the Chekov’s Gun trope, but it didn’t flow right.

The soundtrack was nothing special: they played “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns ’n’ Roses, because of course they did.
Everything after that was just enough to not leave dead silence, but not enough to be entertaining or memorable in any way.

I saw “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” in theaters in 2017 and enjoyed it - it was an outstanding soft-reboot of the “Jumanji” concept and I’d be willing to retroactively give it a 4-Claw rating.
This was the perfect couch movie. It was about 80% as good as the first one, and while I spent a lot of time laughing (Bravestone-DeVito and Mouse-Glover were an absolute hoot), there were just enough little things that irked me that I wouldn’t have been thrilled to pay to see it on the silver screen.
A lot of sequels suffer from the effect of being the entity necessary to get the studio to a super-climactic third movie for a trilogy, and it’s usually quite painful to sit through, because you know a third is on the way and thus the stakes of the second don’t mean much and the plot is usually fairly watered down.
For this, I have no idea if there will be a third. I hope there is, actually, because I love how the characters interact and I love this ‘digital Jumanji’ franchise, and as long as Spencer stays developed, a capstone flick has outstanding potential.
Grab a copy and a bowl of popcorn - you’ll enjoy this one.