Young audiences should enjoy the body-swap adventure, which has a few dopey moments but in general is funny enough for their parents to enjoy as well.Ĭut to the present day, as Spencer (Alex Wolff) squirts some sanitizer on his hands, packs his EpiPen and heads into the germ-filled world of high school. By transforming its teen heroes into adult avatars, this outing both gets beyond the discomfort of throwing small kids into peril (a complaint some critics made against Joe Johnston’s 1995 adaptation starring Robin Williams) and finds a way to milk a talented crew of A-list grown-ups - toplined by Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart - for comic value. Stepping far enough away from Chris Van Allsburg’s 1981 children’s book Jumanji to appeal to older kids while remaining just connected enough to justify keeping the name, Jake Kasdan’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle reimagines the book’s magic-board-game conceit for the era of video games.
