This time, the body-swap choices of the first film are shuffled and multiplied, allowing our adult stars to experiment with a wider range of comically mimicked characters.

More confusing still is the randomness of the in-game avatar identities assigned to each player. “We’re in a ‘video game’,” the youngsters try to explain to the old farts, to little avail.

Unfortunately, Eddie and Milo are unwittingly dragged along for the ride, swept into an alternative universe in which Jurgen the Brutal ( Game of Thrones’s Rory McCann) has stolen Jumanji’s life-giving jewel, threatening its kingdoms with drought and darkness. When Eddie’s disillusioned grandson Spencer (Alex Wolff) ventures back into the Jumanji video game with dreams of once again becoming handsome adventurer Dr Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), his somewhat distant friends are forced to follow. It’s a relief, therefore, to report that Jumanji: The Next Level keeps things upbeat and lively, thanks in no small part to the introduction of two counterintuitively revivifying characters – curmudgeonly old codgers whose gripes and aches provide a jolly counterpoint to the teen angst that fired Kasdan’s previous instalment.ĭanny DeVito and Danny Glover are, respectively, Eddie and Milo – former restaurateurs nursing a 15-year-old estrangement beef.

With a worldwide box-office gross just this side of a billion dollars, a sequel became an industrial necessity – never an inspiring situation. The result was a crowd-pleasing romp that combined the school detention premise of The Breakfast Club with boisterous CG action in sprightly fashion. While Joe Johnston’s Jumanji (starring Robin Williams) had featured fantastical creatures escaping from the titular board-game to run wild in Brantford, New Hampshire, Kasdan’s “continuation of the story” sent four young players into a video game, where they battled a series of challenges in order to earn a safe passage home.

No one was more surprised than I when Jake Kasdan’s 2017 romp Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle managed to squeeze smart new thrills from the premise of Chris Van Allsburg’s 1981 children’s book, first filmed in 1995.

For mac instal Jumanji: The Next Level