jumanji welcome to the jungle online game

The sacred Falcon Jewel has been stolen, and it’s up to you to recover it. Even if, at the same time, it feels like the film may be using that self-awareness to try and compensate for its less interesting twists and some of its bargain bin supporting characters.Once again, Jumanji is in peril.

And with that simple jumping off point, Jumanji proceeds to cheekily play into the kinds of video game and film cliches that have riddled their respective genres, such as unresponsive NPCs or specific character strengths and weaknesses, often to great comedic effect.

With only three lives given to each of them, the four teenagers must try and work together to beat game if they ever hope to make it back to the real world. Having worked together previously, Hart and Johnson garner some of the film’s biggest laughs as the rivalry between their high school selves bleeds over into Jumanji’s video game world in often physically comedic and outrageous ways. This is most evident when The Rock and Kevin Hart share a scene. Most of the film’s comedy comes from those kinds of contradictions, and while the jokes themselves may seem obvious or cheap on paper - like Jack Black constantly asking for his cell phone - the charisma of the actors themselves helps to make a majority of them still land. And with movie stars like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, and Karen Gillan cast as the game’s various avatars, the film has a lot of fun subverting the usual personas of each actor, whether it's The Rock taking on a nerdy, uncomfortable high school dork (Alex Wolff) or Jack Black playing a superficial, pretty popular girl (Madison Iseman).

This results in each member of the main ensemble being played by two different actors, as the portrayals are split between the characters’ actual teenage selves and their adult video game avatars. They take on the physical forms of the avatars they had each selected from Jumanji’s opening menu. A strategy that proves to be successful for the game when a group of unfortunate students all get sucked into the game one day while serving detention together. Set in the modern day, the film opens with an unexpectedly fun twist, as the dangerous Jumanji board game transforms into a video game, so that the more tech-reliant children and adults of today may be more easily sucked into its world.

Jumanji welcome to the jungle online game