Jumanji: The Next Level Review - Sloppy but Satisfying

SPOILERS BELOW

     The first Jumanji movie was a simply enjoyable movie. There wasn't a lot of complications or deeper themes to it, the characters were all pretty one-dimensional and the story was very simple. And because of this, the movie worked perfectly. That's not to say there weren't problems with it, but none of them actively took away from the movie. The simplicity of the movie allowed the creators to sharpen every little aspect of it to make what might  be the most enjoyable movie possible given the story. All the characters got put into just the right avatar to move their arc forward, the multiple lives of a video game setting to forward the "you only have one life" concept was pretty clever, and you could tell that every single actor was having a blast. Also we got Jack Black pretending to be the popular, blonde, high school girl which is perhaps the greatest thing ever. Jumanji 2 (or 3 I guess?) doesn't quite stick the landing quite as well. And this is most likely due to both the two year time frame to create the movie, and a more ambitious plot.

     Where Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, had a very basic high schooler coming into their own plot, The Next Level tries for (vaguely) more complicated themes about getting old and losing connection with your friends. And to the movie's credit, you can see a rather good set-up to explore those themes. Spencer (Alex Wolf/Awkwafina/Dwayne Johnson/boy this movie does not want to make naming the actors for these roles easy) is struggling moving on from high school and the distance that creates between him and his friends so he retreats back into the childhood comfort of playing video games instead of addressing these problems. Then you have Grandpa Eddie (Danny DeVito,  Dwayne Johnson, Awkwafina) as a cautionary tale to Spencer if he follows this path. Eddie has not been able to move on from working at the restaurant that he co-owned with Milo Walker (Danny Glover/ Kevin Hart) and is now a grumpy old man who resents his old age, resents the new restaurant that took the place of what once was his restaurants, and resents Milo Walker for forcing him into retirement. Heck, Spencer and Eddie even have the same two avatars during the movie. 

     All of the actors bring their A game once again and appear to be having even more fun than originally. The weird green water plot device, although strange and relatively inconsequential to the plot (we'll get back to that), does allow all the actors to just go crazy. Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart are having an obvious blast playing elderly people having no clue what's going on. Karen Gillan mostly sticks with what she had in the original, but she has a fun scene as Fridge, even if it is short-lived. Awkwafina seamlessly inserts herself into the Jumanji cast, playing both Spencer and Eddie flawlessly. Nick Jonas doesn't really have anything new or exciting to do but he does his job fine enough. Oddly enough, it's Jack Black that seems to have the most trouble out of the cast, but that's really only in comparison to his phenomenal work in the first one. His Fridge, simply isn't quite as engaging as either Kevin Hart's or Karen Gillan's and definitely is nowhere close to matching his Bethany. 

     The biggest problem with the movie is that it simply isn't as tight as the first one, Fridge (Ser'Darius Blain/Jack Black/Karen Gillan/Kevin Hart) seems to only be in the movie because he was in the first one, and, although Spencer is supposed to be the main character, he's missing for most of the first act of the movie. This confuses who the lead is for the movie, sometimes it seems to be Martha (Morgan Turner/Karen Gillan/Jack Black), sometimes it seems to be Eddie and sometimes you have no idea who it is. Additionally, the body swapping gimmick, while amusing, did not really add anything to the plot. The only reason why it was in there was so that the star cast could have amusing, new characters to begin with but let them play their normal characters again for the climax, which doesn't make much sense because the whole point of the first (or second) Jumanji movie was to allow them to play amusing, new characters so now that they seem to be tied down to specific characters it kinda takes away from the inherent fun of the Jumanji franchise that Sony has set up for us. Maybe it's not that big of a deal, but the way I see it, there really was no narrative reason for the characters to go back to their avatars from the first movie, and there is something more inherently exciting in never knowing who to expect Jack Black or Dwayne Johnson or Kevin Hart or Karen Gillan to be playing every time a new Jumanji movie comes around. If we know that eventually we'll see The Rock return to the nerdy shy character it takes away a bit of the fun. Although if Jack Black wants to play Bethany in all the movies from now until the end of time that's fine with me.

     In the end, Jumanji: The Next Level is a worthy follow-up to the original (or the sequel), even if it's more uneven and is not quite as funny as the original. Still the actors are having as much fun as always and it will always be a joy to see actors playing against their type. The magic of Jumanji is still there, even if not everything else is.

P.S. The horse was nice for a one-joke thing, one that I wish wasn't spoiled in the trailers and promotional imaging, but wasn't very interesting other than that.

P.P.S. The after credit scene sets up an interesting concept for Jumanji 3 (or 4). However, if they fully follow through with it, I'm unsure how they plan on bringing their star cast back.

Personal Rating: 8/10

Entertainment: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Depth: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆

Story: ⭐⭐☆☆☆

Comedy: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Tension: ⭐☆☆☆☆

Acting: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Directing: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

Doctor Sleep Review - 2/3 of a great movie

Doctor Sleep Review

You don't know where your standing.

With that line, the Doctor Sleep turns what could have been a great climax, into a complete mess. Let's be clear, we all knew that this was not going to be as good as The Shining. Now, normally I would say that that shouldn't really matter, and that we should just take the movie for what it is. The problem is, is that the movie is unwilling to do that. So instead we end up with a movie that was banking too hard on people's love of The Shining to get them into the theater, that the movie ruins it's own story needlessly.
That's not to say that this is a bad movie. The first two thirds, although a bit chaotic at times, are actually pretty good. Ewan McGregor and Rebecca Ferguson are both great in their parts. Ewan McGregor nails an older Danny Torrance haunted by his experiences at the overlook hotel and Ferguson plays Rose the Hat with a lot of humanity and at moments you almost root for her to win until she suddenly switches into very creepy mode as soon as it is demanded of her. Honestly, most of the movie, the first act especially, would not have worked at all of these two actors had not brought their a-game. The other actors are passible. I can't exactly call them out for bad performances. The supporting cast all perform their roles as they need to be played, even if they do miss out on the emotional connection sometimes. The other lead character, Abra, played by Kyliech Curran, does about as well as can be expected from a child actress. The only real problem I have with the casting, is not a fact with the acting specifically, but rather the fact that the entirely wrong actors are playing them. Because, well, they decided to recast all the main characters from The Shining for flashbacks and hallucinations. And, except for Carl Lumbly playing Dick Halloran, they are all pretty awful, the worst being a character that appears later on who brings a near-insulting take to a famous character. And I get that this is neither Star Wars nor Marvel, and that facial reconstruction was very likely out of their budgetary restrictions, but just cut all that material please, because it looks and feels awful.
In general, the first two acts of Doctor Sleep, despite a couple missteps that are not impossible to ignore, have two great performances, an engaging story and several interesting ideas but feels like it should have been directed by Stanley Kubrick. If he wasn't dead, that is. From what I can tell, most of the movie follows pretty close to the book, albeit with a lot of cuts, and then suddenly swerves in the third act. As a result, most of the aforementioned interesting ideas are never really tied up in the end, and it feels like those scenes were just added in because they were part of the book, which then doesn't make any sense why they followed the book so closely in the beginning when the ending is so wildly different. I mean, I know why. They wanted the movie to connect more with The Shining so that they could sell more tickets, so they completely re-wrote the ending. Does that mean I think they should have stuck with a re-telling of Doctor Sleep? No. There are plenty of problems with the first two acts that could have been fixed, and despite the stumbling, I liked where the third act was going. So that's why I said that this movie should have been directed by Stanley Kubrick. If he had done to Doctor Sleep what he had done to The Shining, we could have had a really good film on our hands. Instead, what we're left with is a confused film that was too scared to venture too far away from it's source material, but also really, really wanted to be The Shining Part 2 instead of Doctor Sleep.

P.S. Also, is it just me, or was the movie way to fond of cross dissolves? It definitely felt like a third grader was editing the movie and found out that they could add transitions between scenes and got really excited but for some reason was only allowed to use the boring transition.

Personal Rating: 7/10
Entertainment: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆
Depth: ⭐⭐☆☆☆
Story: ⭐☆☆☆☆
Comedy: ⭐☆☆☆☆
Tension: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆
Acting: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆
Directing: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆