Robin Williams Tribute Month: Jumanji (1995)

Having not seen Joe Johnston's Jumanji since I was a kid, I swear the special effects looked better back then, but apparently this was a major flaw pointed out by reviewers at its release. Despite this, Jumanji is still great fun, and another of Robin Williams' energetic roles.

In the late 1960s, 12 year-old Alan Parrish (Adam Hann-Byrd), the son of a shoe-factory owner, unearths a mysterious chest that he hears beating away in a construction site. In it, he finds a board game, titled 'Jumanji'. After a row with his wealthy parents over going to boarding school, Alan and his friend Sarah Wittle (Laura Bell Bundy) start to play 'Jumanji'. Soon it becomes apparent that the game has supernatural powers. Alan is sucked into another world within the game and Sarah abandons him out of fear.

Some 26 years later, siblings Judy (Kirstin Dunst) and Peter (Bradley Pierce) also discover the game and rescue a grown-up Alan (Robin Williams) from inside. They must all now face the trails and tribulations presented to them by 'Jumanji', in order to finish the game.

Despite being adapted from a children's book, Jumanji manages to remain enjoyable for both children and adults, but not simply because it pitches different jokes at different levels (as many children's films attempt to do) but because it evokes some genuinely all age themes, including isolation, growing up and dealing with demanding parents, whilst still entertaining everybody through it's fun and fanciful plot line.

I had totally forgotten that Kirsten Dunst was in this as a child actor, but both her and Pierce are great as the two leading kids. Bonnie Hunt portrays the neurotic and anxious grown-up Sarah Wittle with ease, and David Alan Grier as Carl, shoe-factory worker turned cop, provides some great slapstick humour. However, every time I see this, I find Nora (Babe Neuwirth) absolutely intolerable, though that's more due to the character than Babe's acting.

As we saw with Hook and Aladdin, Robin Williams proves a fitting choice for a children's movie. Whilst his sense of humour may not have always be 'PG-13' (just check out any of his stand-up), his energetic delivery style breathes a lot of life into the characters. Here is no different. Its fun to see him explore the confusion of this boy, raised in the desolate jungles of the 'Jumanji' board, now thrown back into the real world to once more have the basic amenities of toilet paper and a razor.

This was never going to be Robin Williams greatest role, but there's no doubt that the film would have been much worse off without him. Jumanji manages to cross the age brackets and provide a fun experience for all, only slightly hampered by some fairly appalling special effects.