Jumanji: The Next Level (Dir Jake Kasdan, 2h 2m)

 
The videogame sequel, like the film sequel, is a difficult beast. Lean too close to the original and fans will complain that they're basically paying for the same product twice, too far away, and you lose the original fanbase who no longer recognise the game they are playing, or indeed the film they are watching. Jumanji: The Next Level, is, thankfully somewhere slap in the middle of the two, a film that manages to add a few new elements to itself without being too far from the rip-roaring adventure comedy that rebooted the Robin Williams-led franchise of a boardgame that wreaks havoc in the real world with Dwayne Johnson et al attempting to defeat a videogame, and made a cool $962 million in the process.

A couple of years later, our heroes from the first film, having gone their separate ways, but still remaining in touch, are slowly brought back together, with Spencer (Alex Wolff), still sore from his breakup with Martha (Morgan Taylor), and forced to spend time with his grandfather, Eddie (Danny Devito, who entirely steals the show whenever he's on screen) going missing, following an experiment gone wrong with the titular game. With Jumanji eventually sucking both Eddie and Martha, together with Fridge, the atheletic member of the group (Ser'Darius Blain) and Eddie's estranged former business partner, Milo (Danny Glover), so the four must face an entirely new challenge, rescue Spencer, and save Jumanji.

On paper, it sounds like a retread of the original, with a few tweaks here and there, a couple of additional characters, a couple of changes of plot, and slapped out into stor-I mean cinemas, just in time for the pre-Christmas rush to snap it up, with its familiar characters and concept-more of an expansion pack than a true sequel. Not so. For Spencer's tinkering has made Jumanji a darker, more dangerous, and slightly more forbidding place, and placed unfamiliar characters into the boots of their familiar avatars, against villainous Jurgen (Rory McCann, who has taken a jewel that protects Jumanji for himself.

But what it is above all is, for much of its first half, a body-swap comedy that just happens to have an action movie happening around it, the masterstroke being turning Johnson's Smolder Bravestone from the action lead for much of the film into the comedic one, as Eddie's avatar in the world of Jumanji, Fridge in the boots of Jack Black's Professor Oberon, and Milo in the boots of Mouse (Kevin Hart). Indeed-the opening moments of the quartet in Jumanji is full of both fast-paced physical comedy, and equally fast paced jokes, with the formerly tough and short-tempered Hart nimbly playing against character as a loquacious rambler, Johnson as, simply put, a grumpy old man who isn't quite sure if he's dead or simply elsewhere on earth, and Black snappy, quick tempered and trying his best to move the group on to their next task, whilst all three bounce neatly off Karen Gillan's Ruby Roundhouse, the only character to remain in the same avatar.

Even once Awkwafina's thief, Ming, another excellent piece of casting that rounds the group out and adds the clearly apologetic and frightened Spencer back to the group, each of our characters seems, almost enjoyably, out of place-it's only once the septet, with Nick Jonas's pilot and Bethany (Madison Iseman) as, er, a horse, finally make it to a mysterious location where they can change avatars-previously hinted at in a scene with Mouse and Ruby that is, if anything too short and not really taken true advantage of, that the cast seems to click. As Guns n Roses inevitably kicks in, our heroes seem like themselves again, only leant to more with Eddie taking up the mantle of Ming, as Awkwafina slides, pitch-perfectly into the closest thing we'll ever get to Danny Devito played by a woman, including an impressively uncanny recreation of Devito's New York accent.


Certainly this film has the thrills and spills of the original, with several excellent action set-pieces that float excellently-as indeed the first film did, between the action-packed and the comedic-a chase across a desert, pursued by ostriches, is a great moment of building how different Eddie and Milo's Bravestone and Mouse are from their original players, though a reckless stunt is also impressively breathtaking as our heroes escape. Other setpieces lean quite neatly into each of our heroes strengths, though, if the film has one flaw, it is in its not feeling quite as, well, videogame-esque as the first-with the game hacked, this film could have been a lot more inventive, with our heroes exploiting, or indeed, being impacted by the increasingly glitchy game.

What this film has that Jumanji-Welcome to the Jungle lacked, however, is heart. With both Eddie and Milo essentially rejuvenated into younger men, forced to work together, so we begin to see into their friendship and how it soured, with a remarkably tender scene between Hart and Johnson, in which Milo eventually reveals why, after fifteen years, he has chosen to reunite with his former business partner. Both Johnson and Awkwafina capture this sense of Eddie's character well, of a man grown lonely and bitter by his age, somewhat isolated from the rest of the group, until he is essentially forced to become a team player and to realise that growing old is not without its benefits, whilst Spencer and Martha's relationship is reforged in the action

In short, thus, what Jumanji-The Nevel Level is is a more than worthy continuation to the series, in which the world, and its character are neatly expanded, and evolved, with a few new editions, an increased sense of fun, even in the depths of its action scenes, and with the film's heart driving much of its plot. But most of all, The Next Level is, simply put, more of what we expected from the first film, but on, simply put, another level.

Rating: Recommended