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Jumanji

Jumanji

List Price: $27.95
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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Fun, Exciting, but not Realistic.
Review: It's pretty cool, but not really believable

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Welcome to the Jungle
Review: Robin Williams and Kirsten Dunst face bigger-than-life jungle dangers in the engaging family adventure "Jumanji". Young Alan Parrish finds a mysterious board game and is vanished to an imaginable jungle realm. 26 years later, two unsuspected children (Kirsten Dunst & Bradley Pierce) freed the now adult Alan (Robin Williams) and unleash the jungle world of Jumanji upon their quiet town. Based on the best-selling children's book, "Jumanji" is an exciting fast-paced fantasy adventure. Director Joe Johnston combines elements of adventure, fantasy and humor to create an enchanting family spectacle. The clever storyline and characters are certainly amusing. The film contains some great special effects and thrilling scenes but a few effects weren't quite polished. The cast also includes Bonnie Hunt, Bebe Neuwirth, Jonathan Hyde and David Alan Grier.

"Jumanji" Collector Edition is a vast improvement over the previous bare-bones edition. The film is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen format. The DVD contains an impressive video transfer and a clear 5.1 Dolby Digital sound with dynamic surround effects. Among special features, this Collector Series DVD includes multiple behind-the-scenes and FX featurettes, audio commentary with FX supervisor Ken Ralston, theatrical trailers and some great animated menus. Overall, "Jumanji" Collector's Series DVD earns a "B+".

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Weird
Review: Chris Van Allsburg's picture book "Jumanji" was a beautiful but very odd and erie story for older children and adults. I can say the same thing for this movie version, though I think it hardly holds up as well in film form. First off, parents take note: this is a sad and scary film. A boy gets sucked into a board game about the jungle and, unlike Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, is never able to return home. When some other children conjure him out of the game thirty years later, he is physically grown (played by Robin Williams), used to living rather like a savage, and bewildered and saddened that the world has moved on and he has lost his family and his entire youth. Really, this is scary stuff if your child is at all insecure. Furthermore, the game unleashes on the modern world a group of ferocious and destructive animals. The effects are good, and older viewers might enjoy seeing the animals smash up a town. There are a few laughs in this too, but as I say, this is really sort of a younger version of "Jurassic Park," and not appropriate for kids younger than 8. The plot is really pretty haphazard here, and I give it a thumbs down.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: too overplayed
Review: I have this movie on video...and it's not even worth watching it anymore since it's played over and over on every cabel network. The only time this movie made an impact on me was when I saw it at the cinema.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: AMAZING
Review: What can I say? This is quite possibly the greatest movie of all time. Screw Roger Ebert and his One and a Half stars. He's an idiot. I don't know what Peter Travers gave it but listen to him anyways.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "In the Jungle You Must Wait..."
Review: Robin Williams and a young Kirsten Dunst star in Jumanji, a colourful adventure film choc-full of safari-style thrills and (mid 1990s) special effects, right to the end.

1969. Alan Parish is a seventh grade New England kid with bully trouble. Maybe these kids are jealous of him, being a son of the wealthy head of Parish Shoes, or angered that he's spending so much time with their ringleader Billy Jessup's girlfriend, Sarah Whittle. Either way, he gets the heck beaten out of him on a regular basis. To make things worse, his emotionally distant father wants to send him to boarding school. This is all too much for Alan. He wants to run away, to leave his world behind. He gets this chance when he finds Jumanji, an african themed board game, buried on a construction site. Playing it with Sarah at his home, he discovers this is no ordinary game. The pieces move by themselves, words form in the black inky center after each turn, and the horrors they describe appear for real. Alan is sucked into the game, bats fly from the fireplace, and Sarah abandons the game, screaming all the way home.

26 years later, the Parish home is sold to Nora Shepherd with orphaned nephew Peter (Bradley Pierce) and niece Judy (Kirsten Dunst) reluctantly in tow. Since their parents died, Peter hasn't spoken a word in public and Judy is a chronic liar. Led by jungle drums, they discover Jumanji in the attic and continue playing where Alan and Sarah left off, summoning not only all sorts of horrors from deepest, darkest Africa, but a grown up Alan Parish (Robin Williams), wild from spending 26 years in the jungle. The more turns taken, the wilder their world becomes -with elephants, spiders, killer jungle vines. Will they be able to finish the game, to face their collective fears, or will they die trying?

There's a lot of change in this film, which for me made it very exciting to watch when I was younger. It was fun to watch the transformation of the Parish mansion from spotless and sterile to wild and foreboding, the transformation of local cop Bill's police car from immaculate to totally trashed at the hands of the Jumanji residents, Peter's transformation from boy to monkey after he tries to cheat in the game, the transformation of the citizens from polite and civilized (in 1969), to panicky and looting (at the discount store in 1995) and of course the transformation of the lives of the players once they completed the game.

I also enjoyed the variety of creatures who run amok in the town. Some are animatronic, while others are computer animated, it makes for a good mix. I wish there was more animatronic work in recent film, as I think animatronic creatures are far more realistic than many modern CGI film nasties. Even though there are so many creatures, they're never rushed or underdeveloped. They are summoned, the reappear later, they intermingle with one another. Each has a distinct character, the cheeky monkeys, the mindless stampeding elephants and rhinos.Even the pelican, which only has a small part in the film, has character.

I love the atmosphere of this film. There's a feeling that anything could happen here, a great feel to have for a movie like this. There's just something about the contrast between suburban New England and the enroaching Jumanji jungle. (A great choice in location, by the way).

An exciting adventure, with plenty a twist and turn to keep kids thrilled and entertained.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: My kids went Ape over it!
Review: My wife and I first saw Jumanji on the day we were due to deliver our first daughter. Last weekend I showed it to that daughter, now eight, and her six-year old sister. I have never seen kids so engaged in a movie as they were with Jumanji. They shouted warnings to the characters, jumped back when animals charged and instinctively raised their feet when floodwaters filled the house during the movie. The youngest has since begged me to let her take it to school to show her class.

Personally, I thought it was cute and entertaining. As to buying it, I wouldn't if it was just for me but having seen the way my kids behaved while watching it, I'll be getting it in a heartbeat.


Rating: 4 stars
Summary: This is Horror and Not Fantasy Comedy
Review: During one of my late nights I watched Jumanji again. This is a film starring Robin Williams and is based on a children's book (if by based one can mean it shares the title and a few illustrations). The film was released as a special effects extravaganza but failed to live up to the advertising.

Jumanji is a mysterious board game. Once you start to play you have to end the game. Each roll of the dice unleashes some new nasty obstacle that must be overcome. This can be giant mosquitos and spiders, monkeys and lions, earthquakes, stampedes, quicksand and carnivorous vines, or something even nastier. When Robin Williams was a young boy he found the game buried at a construction site. The opening moves resulted in Williams being banished to the game until someone rolls a five or an eight. Unfortunately no one believes the young girl who had been playing the game with him.

The scene jumps ahead twenty-six years to the present and the new residents of the house find the old game and begin to play. Williams is returned, now twenty-six years older and very jungle-wise. The first things out of the game were destructive enough that the kids decide to finish the game so that everything will be back to normal. Unfortunately the game thinks there are now four players. Williams must find his childhood friend and convince her to continue the game.

As more and more destructive forces are released we learn that Williams's disappearance caused the town to go into a tailspin. The new horrors just speed up the decay. The four players face frustrating and deadly things as they finally finish the game. In the end all is returned to normal. The normal of when the game was started twenty-six years previously. Williams is now a kid again. The scene jumps to the present again and the town is prosperous while Williams tracks down the kids he finished the game with.

This is a very intense film and was probably not suited for the young target audience. This was marketed as a fun fantasy cor children, but what this film is in fact is juvenile horror. Not bad horror, but horror aimed at kids. Taken in that light it is a very well done film with tense moments, humor and subtleties and is worth checking out. But if you are looking for a fun-filled farce you would do better to look elsewhere.


Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Jumanji
Review: This film does all you would want it to do. That is; entertain you.
I'm not going to outline the movie for you, many of the others have done that already. But, I will say you won't be sorry you got this movie, good effects, interesting concept, another good dramatic appearance by Robin Williams.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Awesome movie!
Review: This movie is absolutely amazing. My kids had only been used to videos such as "There goes a bulldozer" or the Pooh videos. I figured I'd introduce them into the world of "big" movies with this one. At first I was a bit worried that my two year old would be scared of it, but he did fine. As soon as the movie was over, I had to turn it on again. At the time, my boys were ages 4 and 2. We watched this movie at least twice a day. My husband and I could recite the scenes word for word. And then, alas, they moved on to new movies. I still ask them to watch Jumanji. It's one of my favorites!


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