Jungle Love

I guess it's time to admit it: We love just about everything Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson does. So, we watched Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017).

Since we didn't watch the original, we have no idea how this relates. But it starts with a new back story: a kid starts playing a video game and is never seen again. Then we go to the "present day" and meet our heroes: a nerd who is writing a paper for his black, popular "friend", a selfie-obsessed girl, and a shy girl who doesn't want to participate in gym. They all get Breakfast Club detention together, and find an old video game. They chose characters and are magically transported into the game.

In the game, the nerdy kid is fabulous archeologist Dwayne Johnson. The big black kid becomes schlubby zoologist Kevin Hart. The popular girl is cartographer Jack Black, and the nerdy girl has become Lara-Croftian dance fighter Karen Gillan. So the nerds become hunks and the beautiful people become ordinary. That's the joke.

And it's a pretty good one. Seeing Dwayne Johnson fret because he doesn't have his inhaler, or Jack Black playing a teenage girl in Jack Black's body - funny. Of course, Johnson does it best, because of his gentle giant style. In fact, his role here kind of mirrors another movie he did with Kevin Hart: Central Intelligence. The weakest approximation is the nerd girl turned femme fatale - I'd guess because none of the ~5 writers are women, and they have a little trouble getting inside the character.

They get an explanation of the point of the game from a non-player character, Rhys Darby. He doesn't mention the three lines they find tattooed on their wrists. But when someone dies and re-appears (falling from a great height) with one fewer lines, they realize that these are life counters - and intuit (?) that when they lose the last line, they die for real.

On the other hand, if they don't die or win the game, they might wind up stuck in the game forever, like Nick Jonas, the guy from the opening scene, who has been stuck in the game on his last life for ~20 years.

The whole thing has a great mix of premise, character, and just plain jokes. The action isn't bad either, especially Gillan's dance fights, choreographed to "Baby I Love Your Way." But I kind of feel that it's Johnson's charisma that does a lot of the work here. He's just that likable.