Find a comfortable chair, lay out the board, grab the dice, and get ready to play. But remember: once you start this game, you can't stop. If it takes you over twenty years to finish, finish you must.
"Jumanji" is loosely based on the Caldecott Medal-winning children's book by Chris Van Allsburg. The basic premise stays the same: a sister and brother find a strange game based on a jungle safari adventure. When they begin playing it, they find they cannot stop, for the characters and events of the game come to life and start filling their house with monkeys, lions, explorers and other strange things. Only finishing the game will make it all go away.
In the hands of Hollywood, more story is added. Now we have a game spanning 26 years, when one of the two children playing the game in 1969 gets sucked into the game itself. He's trapped there until a fresh pair of children in 1995 find the game and begin playing. The right number is rolled, and out Alan comes...as Robin Williams! Finding the grown girl to complete the group, the four must complete the game before their town is destroyed by the stampeding rhinos, killer pod vines and crazed Great White Hunter.
Robin has some good moments in this film, though he isn't allowed to riff as much as in other vehicles. He's supported by an excellent cast, including a young Kirsten Dunst as the sister of the new pair of children; Jonathan Hyde as both the 1969 father and Van Pelt, the Great White Hunter from the game; and Bebe Neuwirth as the modern children's aunt. The effects are, not surprisingly, ILM-excellent -- necessary in a film of this type. The script was co-written by Van Allsburg to insure the atmosphere of the film and book mesh, but he did not fall into the "This is MY baby" syndrome, and received good help from his two co-writers (for details, see the main page). Highly recommended for old and young alike.
