Peter Canavese
2005-11-23 19:45:19 UTC
Like the rest of Johnston's oeuvre, Jumanji puts vivid characters through paces that will quicken any child's pulse.
"A game for those who seek to find/A way to leave their world behind." These words, etched into a sinister, magical board game called "Jumanji," promise escapist adventure, which is exactly what Joe Johnston's energetic family film Jumanji delivers. Johnston's roster of pulp-pop entertainment is surprisingly solid: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Rocketeer, October Sky, Jurassic Park III, and Hidalgo (I'm discounting his co-direction of 1994's ill-conceived live-action/animation hybrid The Pagemaster). Like the rest of Johnston's oeuvre, Jumanji puts vivid characters through paces that will quicken any child's pulse.
In 1869 New Hampshire, two kids bury the accursed, jungle-themed board game, which protests by thumping native drums. One hundred years later, bullied teen Alan Parrish (Adam Hann-Byrd) discovers the game and brings it to his richly appointed family home. After an argument with his stuffy, hard-to-please father (Jonathan Hyde) and sympathetic mother (Patricia Clarkson), Alan invites pretty pal Sarah (Laura Bell Bundy) give the game a whirl. Before you can say "Jumanji," Alan has been sucked into the game board and Sarah chased off by bats the game has conjured.
Another twenty-six years pass to find two new kids moving into the scary old Parrish house, from whence a kid once disappeared. Judy and Peter Shepherd (Kirsten Dunst and Bradley Pierce) are a pathological liar and a willful mute, respectively—acting out and in after the tragic auto crash that claimed their parents. Under the not-so-watchful eye of their aunt (Bebe Neuwirth), Judy and Peter discover the dusty game and reawaken its dangers. They're terrified to discover they've invited into their home poisonous mosquitoes, a mob of monkeys, a lion, and a wild man who answers to the name of Alan Parrish (Robin Williams).
Soon enough, it's evident that the game Alan and Sarah started in 1969 will have to be finished to rid the town of the multiplying African terrors. This daunting plan requires recruiting the adult Sarah (now played by Bonnie Hunt) and burying the hatchet with Alan's old friend Carl (David Alan Grier), now a cop troubleshooting the worst day of his career. Grier amuses in his usual yapping vein, and skilled riffer Hunt perfectly matches Williams, who's likewise well suited to these literally hairy theatrics.
Like a kiddie Robert Bly fable, Jumanji uses imagination to deal with masculine issues. Alan and his young charges must face their fears, and boy-man Alan's worst fear is that he's not man enough. The spectre of his father reappears in the guise of a big-game hunter named Van Pelt, also played by Hyde. An emasculating, demanding jerk, Van Pelt wields a blunderbuss in Alan's direction and bellows, "Come back and face me like a man!"
Like the carefully heightened film they inhabit, the (once) state-of-the-art special effects are convincing on a child's terms. James Horner's pleasingly bombastic score completes the effect. Parents should think twice about exposing their youngest children to the furiously frantic Jumanji, but most school-age kids will thrill happily to this newly fangled take on old-fashioned adventure.
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