Arnold
Tash Jayasinghe
CibbuanoJumanji
December 21st 2006 10:38
This wasn't as good as I remembered it to be. In case you're unaware of the film, 'Jumanji' is a fantasy/adventure film that fails to be as exciting as it's premise should have enabled it to be, but is still fun enough to enjoy all the same. Basically, the film centres around an unexplained game that unleashes all manner of jungle-based perils upon a small American town, and must be played out to the end if the havoc it causes is to be stopped. Robin Williams plays a long-lost player of the game who has spent some thirty years inside the jungle-world it contains. Sounds like great stuff, right? Well, kids are easily impressed.
First of all, the kiddy-characters are your typical paint-by-numbers cliched children - a big thing is made out of how one of them has been willingly mute since his parents died, but half an hour later the whole idea is forgotten, begging the question... do people even read these scripts before shooting? Sure, the film is a fairly good idea, but it's slightly wasted by a poor script (too many lapses of logic and a predictable copout of an ending). And the 'cutting-edge CGI effects' have dated badly in too short a time, and will be completely laughable in 10 years from now.
It's not all bad though, it is fun, and like I said - kids are easily impressed. I can sit through it and smile, but I can't help but feel that it could've been done a whole lot better. As it is, it remains a fairly forgettable film because of it's lack of development – do these people not care that their films won't stand the test of time? I just don't get it. Williams gives one of his usual child-man zany-yet-restrained mid-90s performances, and the rest of the cast give as good as the film gets. Adam Hann-Byrd (young Alan Parrish) probably gives the most standout performance, and he only really appears for 15 minutes. There's not much else to say really, it's entertaining but if you liked it when you were young don't go back to watch it expecting something great.
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