Jumanji's 'Next Level' delivers more of the same
Two Christmases ago, “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” made a ton of money, mostly because it proved better and funnier than it had any right to be.
This year’s sequel, “Jumanji: The Next Level,” rehashes its predecessor with just a few novel tweaks. It’s all fairly mediocre, save for a few inspired comedic performances.
“Next Level” continues with “Jumanji” being a video game that sucks its players into a dangerous live-action world. Rather than appearing as themselves, however, players become avatars that look like Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan. In “Welcome to the Jungle,” the headlining cast got to behave like teenagers, with The Rock serving as an avatar for an awkward nerd, Jack Black playing the superficial teenage girl, etc.
Some of those characterizations are repeated in “The Next Level,” but a few new variations occur as well. Two elderly guys, played by Danny DeVito and Danny Glover, get sucked into the game this time, allowing The Rock and Hart to bicker for much of the movie while doing broad impressions of DeVito and Glover. It’s an amusing twist for a while, though both performers seem fairly uncomfortable doing the voices.
The plot of the in-game adventure doesn’t make much of an impression - something about the gang needing to collect a gem or whatever from a bad guy. There are killer monkeys, a massive ostrich stampede chase sequence and other moments of CGI mayhem.
When the jokes land, the movie works fine. Black delivers most of the highlights playing two different personalities, and Awkwafina arrives about halfway through to inject the movie with new energy (she also does a much better impression of DeVito compared to Johnson).
“Jumanji: The Next Level” exists to be a serviceable option for families who can’t secure tickets to “Star Wars” this holiday season. Just don’t expect to remember much of it beyond the theater parking lot.
LaBeouf works through past trauma in ‘Honey Boy’
As a longtime fan/apologist of Shia LaBeouf, it’s nice to see others react so positively to “Honey Boy,” a movie about a child actor and his relationship with his alcoholic father. LaBeouf wrote the screenplay based on his own life, and “Honey Boy” splits time between a father-son relationship on the set of a children’s TV show (not unlike LaBeouf’s breakout Disney Channel series, “Even Stevens”), and that same kid grown up and making big Hollywood blockbusters (not unlike LeBeouf’s “Transformers” period).
Lucas Hedges plays the adult version of Not-Shia who has landed in rehab after a series of public meltdowns. In the flashbacks, LaBeouf himself plays the alcoholic father, clearly based on his own dad. LaBeouf is magnetic in the role, applying his own personal pain into a performance of the person that caused him so much of that turmoil.
LaBeouf wrote the screenplay as part of an exercise in rehab, which, on paper anyway, sounds like an indulgent vanity exercise. However, “Honey Boy” does manage to tell a compelling story about a toxic relationship in which a father holds his past failures against his more successful kid (Noah Jupe, superb as the young Not-Shia). Director Alma Har’el (in her narrative feature debut) also commands a confident visual style and applies solid narrative momentum as the movie jumps between the two timelines.
Even if “Honey Boy” began as a therapeutic exercise for LaBeouf, Har’el and the performers (LaBeouf included) turn it into something with much broader dramatic appeal. And if it means LaBeouf can go about giving good performances without any of the public distractions, then all the better.
Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com. He is the co-host of Old Millennials Remember Movies, available everywhere you find podcasts and at OldMillennialsRemember.com.