My Review of "Jumanji: The Next Level"

Jumanji was a huge hit when it first came out in the 90's. It's only natural with all of the remakes that we're getting nowadays that they would want to remake this movie. When they remade the movie they put a totally different spin to the whole franchise which made the movie feel fresh and fun while still paying some homage to the original. Movie studios are predictable so you know that they had to have a sequel to the newly revamped Jumanji franchise. Here we are today with the new Jumanji film appropriately subtitled "the next level".

We have all of the actors from the original movie back in this sequel but they had to have a new plot device to get the gang back into the game. I guess it wasn't really a new original idea but it kind of works. So Spencer, played again by Alex Wolff, becomes his insecure self again after they stopped playing the game. He's disassociated himself from everything and has become his old self before he went into the game. He comes home for the Christmas holidays and kind of has this breakdown and decides to get back into the game.

His friends from the first movie are all worried about him when they discover that Spencer hasn't been communicating with them and decide to investigate and soon discover that Spencer had gone back into the game. They go back to save him. That's basically the story that starts off the movie and gets the whole team back together.

This time they have two new characters. Spencer's grandfather Eddie, played by Danny Devito and Eddie's old business partner Milo, played by Danny Glover. To me these two new characters weren't really necessary for the whole movie. I thought they actually slowed down the movie in the very beginning. Eddie as a character isn't very likable and when he gets pulled into the Jumanji game it can at times feel unbearable.

Yes, this movie has a pretty rough start. Eddie and Milo characters at times seemed very unnecessary and a burden to the movie. They obviously have a character development arc throughout the movie that was nice but ultimately it really slowed down the pace of the movie for me.

That's not to say that the movie wasn't enjoyable and fun. It does get fun. There is that little hump of getting over the old men in the movie but once that's over with the movie really gets going. It actually really picks up closer to the last half of the movie. I have to say that Jack Black's role is really understated in this movie. I thought he did so well in the diversity of his acting in this movie. He plays multiple roles and he does them justice. I thought he kind of stole the show in certain scenes. All of the game characters did a pretty good job though. Each one of them had to change characters in the movie and they all did a good job emulating the character that takes over the new avatar (I know it sounds confusing but if you see the movie you'll know what I mean).

There are a ton of special effects and they're pretty much on par with the last movie. The last movie did a pretty good job so the same high caliber of special effects are included in this movie as well. This includes some of the fight scenes. The fight scenes were done pretty nicely. They don't have them in the dark (I don't know why so many movies have night time fight scenes). They're done with a nice wide picture so you can understand what's going on and everything is pretty clear and understandable so it isn't a jumbled mess.

Overall, I would say that this movie is still worth watching especially if you liked the previous movie. It does have a lot of slowdown in the beginning that kind of takes you away from the movie which makes me consider this movie inferior to the previous movie. Luckily, it doesn't take away from the full enjoyment of the movie. I would have to give this movie a 7 out of 10. If you still haven't seen the previous movie I would highly suggest watching that one first before watching this one. It's not a requirement to understand this movie but it would make this movie a little more enjoyable.