When “Jumanji” was released in 1995, audiences played along with its outlandish premise—a boy getting sucked into a board game—and for its spellbinding special effects. Those effects don’t look so special in 2019. But the story of kids getting lost in another world holds up, which is why it got an extra life in 2017. With a board game being swapped for a video game, little kids being swapped for a roll call of “Breakfast Club” misfits, the charming premise got a modern update in “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.” It also made a lot of money ($962 million worldwide), so now there’s a sequel to the reboot. Because, if we have learned anything over the past couple of years, it’s that Hollywood will reprogram anything, even if the sequel’s story is as lifeless as a CPU.
In “Jumanji: The Next Level,” things pick up where they left off. The four high school students haven’t forgotten about each other in college, and they still embody their “Breakfast Club” archetypes: Bethany (Madison Iseman) is still the coddled princess, Spencer (Alex Wolff) is still the self-conscious nerd having an identity crisis, Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain) is still the jock struggling in school, and Martha (Morgan Turner) is still the shy girl who isn’t convinced she is pretty. Still, all of these characters, having embodied their weaknesses in the game of Jumanji, are coping with college just fine. Well, almost everyone. The new status quo hasn’t been a walk in the park for Spencer. In hopes to escape the college life, he ventures down to his basement, fixes the smashed game console, transporting himself back into Jumanji with the hopes of becoming a hero again.
That means the gang’s getting back together. Or so they think. Hoping to save their friend from peril, his pals accidentally take Spencer’s grandpa (Danny Devito) and his grandpa’s old friend Milo (Danny Glover) with them, leaving Bethany behind. What’s new here is that the bodies have switched, and continue to switch throughout the runtime. This gives Jack Black, Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson, and Karen Gillan, who play the game’s avatars, the chance to swap impressions for two hours. Johnson and Hart look like they are having a blast when playing crotchety old men. Johnson juggles the smoldering intensity of his avatar and the stupidity of Devito’s grandfather character in a way that will score some laughs, while Hart slows down his manic routine to an elderly pace as Milo, nailing the slow, smooth-talking voice of Glover. The same energy applies to Black, who spends most of his screen time as Fridge, Gillan, who somehow becomes Martha again, and newcomer Awkwafina, who plays Spencer’s avatar.
All of the performances are charged, except the film around them seems to be running on low battery. Some of the digital set pieces are entertaining enough. The team gets to ride camels across the desert to “Lawrence of Arabia’s” theme music. Other memorable moments are centered around the avatar’s using their powers (Johnson punching baddies through walls, Gillan roundhouse kicking killer monkeys). Yet the settings are too artificial to be enthralling. It’s hard for audiences to be sucked into the action when the CGI looks as if it came from a video game.
Written by Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg, ‘The Next Level’ settles for being more of the same—more of the same plot (beat the bad guys, find the gem); more of the same humor (poop and dick jokes abound); and more of the same reaction shots (there are more reaction shots than dialogue). What’s missing is the heartfelt story of teenagers finding their true selves in Jumanji. The real levels these characters face are the levels of life. “Welcome to the Jungle” expertly captures the anxiety of finding yourself in high school, warming our hearts in the process as Spencer, Bethany, Fridge, and Martha found a friend group where they could be themselves without judgment. Director Jake Kasdan isn’t able to strike lightning twice in his cash-grab sequel, ‘The Next Level.’ When everyone makes it out of the game this time, Fridge exclaims, “Let’s never go back there again!” One can only hope. [C-]