I know the saying "Second parts are worse than first", so I wasn't too excited about this movie and thought "I bet they ruined it, a videogame? Seriously?". I'm so glad they proved me wrong!! You should not compare it to the first Jumanji, since this movie stands on its own. There are one or two references but that's all and it's ok. Jumanji now turned into a videogame that sucks players into it. It's not explained how or why this happened, but it's a magical game and if we can believe a stampede can come out of it, we can imagine suddenly turning itself into a videogame as the times changed. The teenagers are pretty much stereotypes, the jock, the nerd, the popular blond and the shy one. But once they are in the game, they change. The movie used this change for comedy and surprisingly, it works great!! Dialogues are really funny (and not dumb and cliched, and that's practically a miracle nowadays). Credit goes to the actors who play the videogame characters. They totally make you believe they are the teenagers in those avatars. And the game play is very well done. It's an old school adventure game, where characters have a item box where everything fits, the 3 lives are there, the non-player characters that repeat the same thing, secret passages, hints, the big boss, the map and stuff. It also has a "smoldering function" which comes out hilarious on screen. It's not as dark as the first, the animals were more dangerous and Van Pelt was vicious. This is a light comedy, and it works just great!
Review of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
