JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL (2019) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

jumanji: the next level (2019) movie

Genre              |   Fantasy Adventure

Classification   |   PG

Running time   |   120 minutes

Released         |   26 December 2019

cast

Dwayne Johnson as Bravestone
Jack Black as Oberon
Kevin Hart as Finbar
Karen Gillan as Ruby

director

Jake Kasdan

writer

Jeff Pinkner ... (screenplay)
Scott Rosenberg ... (screenplay)
​
Chris Van Allsburg ... (book)

cinematographer

TBA

music

TBA

film editor

Steve Edwards ​

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box office result

Worldwide             $​TBA

Australia                 $​TBA

North America       $TBA

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movie minutiae

Like the first one, this is heading into theaters one week prior to a STAR WARS movie. JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE (2017) came out a week before STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (2017), and this is coming out a week before STAR WARS: EPISODE IX (2019).

Jack Black referred to this movie as JUMNAJI 4, citing JUMANJI (1995), ZATHURA: A SPACE ADVENTURE (2005) and JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE (2017) as the other films in the series.

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related movies

 JUMANJI:
​WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE (2017)

JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL (2019) MOVIE IMAGES

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Posters

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Posters

JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL (2019) STORY SYNOPSIS

​In Jumanji: The Next Level, the gang is back but the game has changed. As they return to Jumanji to rescue one of their own, they discover that nothing is as they expect. The players will have to brave parts unknown and unexplored, from the arid deserts to the snowy mountains, in order to escape the world’s most dangerous game.

JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL (2019) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 26 December 2019

​​Pop Movee Rating

Viewers who loved JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE (2017) will be pumped when they see what’s on offer in JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL, the new installment based upon the 1981 children’s book written by Chris Van Allsburg.

While the game technology has changed over the years, the premise remains the same…

People literally trapped inside a game (Board or Computer) need to find their way out before they are killed!

Pretty simple.

The 1995 Robin Williams film wasn’t an absolute blockbuster, but it was successful enough for Sony to go back to the franchise when they were hunting around for a project that would see the combination of Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart reteam for a feature film. Throw in Jack Black and then up-and-coming Karen Gillan and the 2017 soft reboot of the JUMANJI franchise looked like it could be reasonably successful bet.

Not too many people would have expected JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE to have grossed nearly a billion dollars at the global box office, but that’s exactly what happened as the absence of a Disney blockbuster during the Christmas and New Year holiday season at the time saw audiences flock to the next best thing.

Director & Co-Writer Jake Kasdan must have figured “if it ain’t broke” double-down and go again, as THE NEXT LEVEL doesn’t do a great deal to extend the franchise beyond its previous installment…

This time around Alex Wolff’s Spencer isn’t quite coping with the transition from high school to college; the aura of the “Big Apple” is not quite what he had imagined and the pressure of studying and holding down a job to support himself is proving hard to juggle. To make matters more complicated, Spencer’s previously blossoming relationship with Morgan Turner’s Martha has hit a speedbump by way of her apparent increasing popularity elsewhere (due to Spencer’s kind-of-creepy monitoring of her social media status).

Rather unwisely, Spencer decides that the best form of therapy for his problems is to escape back into the Jumanji game; something that he, Martha, “Fridge” (Ser'Darius Blain) and Bethany (Madison Iseman) had vowed to never again let happen at the end of the 2017 film.

So much for promises…

Concerned for their friend, Martha, “Fridge” and Bethany head over to Spencer’s home, only to find his Grandfather Eddie (Danny DeVito) and Milo (Danny Glover), Eddie’s former business partner in residence trying to work out why their own friendship has disintegrated. Spencer is nowhere to be found, but soon enough, it becomes clear what he’s done…

This time around, only Martha and “Fridge” get dragged into the game but they are joined by Eddie and Milo. Martha gets left behind, but this proves to be a fortunate turn of events, as she mounts a real-world rescue attempt, enlisting the help of Alex (Colin Hanks), whose avatar “Jefferson” (Nick Jonas) helped the quartet survive the game’s perils last time around.

This is where the new film really takes a turn for the whacky…

Upon being drawn into the game, the characters don’t necessarily inhabit the same avatars from the first film…

Martha gets another turn as Ruby Roundhouse (Karne Gillan), but “Fridge” is now Professor Oberon (Jack Black). Milo winds up as Mouse (Kevin Hart), while Eddie - ironically - gets to be Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson). 

Eddie inhabiting the Bravestone avatar is the catalyst for most of the group’s problems when they’re in the game. Eddie may be small in stature, but he has a big mouth and tends to speak (and act) before thinking. Melded with the powers of Bravestone, he becomes somewhat insufferable and complicates the group’s efforts to solve the fetch quest set out for them by Rhys Darby’s Non-Player Character Guide Nigel Billingsley.

Kasdan, along with returning writers Jeff Pinker & Scott Rosenberg, set-up the story as an environmentally-conscious adventure as the group is tasked with recovering the Falcon’s Heart, a magical necklace that allows Jumanji to be a fertile, prosperous land. The necklace has been stolen by Jurgen the Brutal (Rory McCann), a warlord responsible for the death of Bravestone’s parents, and Jumanji is now a drought affected place on the brink of environmental disaster.

Anyone looking for a thoughtful narrative or sensible plot should check their hopes at the ticket counter or look for something else to see. JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL is an over-the-top extension of the 2017 film and makes no sense whatsoever. The reason why this film exists is for a chance to get Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan back together for more-of-the-same silliness.

For the most part, Kasdan and his team of performers manage to achieve what they set out to do. The biggest mis-step is the writing team’s desire to mix-up the characters and their avatars. One of the successful elements of the WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE was the character/avatar pairing. The inclusion of the two Dannys in THE NEXT LEVEL complicates an already confusing scenario and prevents the story from mining more of the comedy that helped balance the 2017 film.

At 123 minutes, THE NEXT LEVEL feels a little long. It certainly would not have hurt to have removed one of the film’s set pieces or trimmed down the finale to have delivered something that doesn’t stretch either the target audience’s powers of concentration (or their parents/guardians patience) too far. There’s only so many fetch quests within a fetch quest movie that can be tolerated before everyone starts asking themselves why they didn’t just stay at home online gaming.

And this goes to the heart of the problem with movies like THE NEXT LEVEL and this year’s other big Christmas release, STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER. 

These films are passive entertainment compared to what’s available online. 

A significantly greater amount of time will be spent by people under the age of 30 playing STAR WARS JEDI: FALLEN ORDER than what they do watching THE RISE OF SKYWALKER at the cinema. RISE OF SKYWALKER exists not just to finish the Skywalker Saga but also to help support the ever-expanding STAR WARS online universe, where the repeat commercial opportunities represent a much greater lure for companies such as Disney. 

JUMANJI doesn’t have the fan base nor the mythology to tap into multiple entertainment platforms in the same way as STAR WARS.

This presents a real challenge for this franchise.

Without ongoing supporting content to remind potential future audiences about JUMANJI, a two year interval between films is far too long to keep the series top-of-mind among the target audience. There are simply too many other options for these people to access. Not even the inclusion of Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black or Karen Gillan will be enough to justify ever-increasing production budgets against the natural decline in the box office grosses that nearly every movie franchise suffers with each subsequent sequel.

JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL is a lot of fun and is the equal of the 2017 film in nearly every respect. At best, however, in its current format, the series only has one more film left in it. There’s a mid end credit sequence that suggests Kasdan (and Sony) know where they want to take the franchise, but doing the same thing in a different setting may not be enough of a hook to get audiences to buy into future adventures.

The challenge for the JUMANJI film series now is to find the next level beyond THE NEXT LEVEL.

JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL MOVIE (2019) USEFUL LINKS

Jumanji: The Next Level - Wikipedia
​Jumanji: The Next Level (2019) - IMDb
​Jumanji: The Next Level (2019) - Rotten Tomatoes​

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