12th of Blaugust - J - Jumanji

I was initially unsure what to do my post for J on. And then I just discovered the news of Robin Williams' passing. He had made a large contribution to film and comedy. My personal favourite of his films will always be Good Morning Vietnam. However, in keeping with my Blaugust theme I will be talking about the 1995 movie Jumanji.

I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with this fils having been a child of the nineties like myself. But it goes something like this. A child by the name of Alan Parish comes across an ancient mysterious board game called Jumanji and convinces his friend Sarah to play with him. Sarah's first role summons bats (which don't yet appear) but Alan's first role has him sucked into the board game until another player roles a five or an eight. This and the appearance of the bats scares Sarah silly. Fast forward 26 years and two more kids stumble upon the game and decide to have a go. Unknowingly they are playing the same game. Amongst other scary things happening, a five is rolled and Alan finally returns as an adult (as as Robin Williams). They all decide the only was to fix all the terifying events is to finish the game proper so they go find Sarah who has been in hiding and convince her to join in as the game won't let anyone else have their turn. A hilarious safari hunter (who manages to out act everyone in this film) is brought out of the game that tries to kill Alan and other events happen so that special effects companies Industrial Light & Magic and Amalgamated Dynamics can smother the film with impressive ways to try to win an Academy Award. Eventually Alan wins the game and all is reset back to when Alan and Sarah were kids and they all live happily ever after.

I remember a huge amount of kids in my class absolutely loving this film when it came out. I don't know why to be honest. I thought it was ok. It was definitely watchable and the effects were good I guess. I just didn't think it was a masterpiece. Perhaps the hype over this film was just so we could watch it in class after it came out on video and not do any work. Films in school were way rarer then they are today. Nowadays it's here a film study, there a film study, everywhere a film study film study. Perhaps it was that safari hunter Van Pelt. He was an absolute scream after all.