Jumanji is a 1995 American fantasy adventure film about a supernatural board game that makes wild animals and other jungle hazards materialize upon each player's move. It was directed by Joe Johnston and is based on Chris Van Allsburg's popular 1981 picture book of the same name. The special effects were provided by Industrial Light & Magic in computer graphics, and Amalgamated Dynamics with animatronics. The film stars Robin Williams, Kirsten Dunst, Bradley Pierce, Bonnie Hunt, David Alan Grier, Bebe Neuwirth and Jonathan Hyde. It was shot in Keene, New Hampshire, where the story is set, North Berwick, Maine (the Parrish Shoes factory) and Vancouver, British Columbia. In 2005, a spiritual sequel to Jumanji, Zathura, was released.
An official sequel, entitled Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, is scheduled to be released on December 20, 2017 and Jumanji: The Next Level, was released on December 13, 2019.
Plot[]
In 1869, two boys bury a chest in a forest near Brantford, New Hampshire.
A century later, 12-year-old timid Alan Parrish rides his bike around the now colonized town. When he passed an old statue of an apparent relative, a group of bullies appear and chased him down. He hides in a shoe factory owned by his father, Samuel Parrish. At the factory, he meets his friend Carl Bentley, one of Sam's employees. Carl showed Alan a new prototype sneaker he hopes to present to Sam and wants to put out on the market. Sam confronts his son, realized Alan's problems and told him "You should always face when you are afraid." When Alan accidentally damages a machine after misplacing the shoe on its conveyor belt, Carl takes the blame and Sam fires him. Outside the factory, after the bullies beat Alan up and steal his bicycle, Alan follows the sound of tribal drumbeats to a construction site and finds the chest, containing a board game called Jumanji.
Alan takes the game home. He just took two of its playing tokens, which are shaped like animals out when his mother Carol came home the two tokens mysteriously placed themselves on their starting spaces once Alan dropped them. Later that night, Alan attempts to run away after having an argument with his father about attending a boarding school. However, his friend Sarah Whittle interrupts and gives his bike back. After Sarah heard the drumbeats, Alan invites her to play Jumanji with him, which acts strangely: When a player rolls the dice, the player's piece moves itself and a cryptic message describing the roll's outcome appears in the crystal ball at the center of the board. When Alan inadvertently makes his first move, a message tells he must wait in a jungle until someone rolls a five or eight, and he is sucked into the game, terrifying Sarah. Sarah abandons the game after being attacked by swarm of bats.
Twenty-six years later, two kids Judy and Peter Shepherd move into the Parrish house with their Aunt Nora after their parents died in a crash during a skiing trip in Canada. The loss of their parents rendered the kids anti-social. One of the bats was in the attic that scared Peter, so Nora calls for animal service; find nothing, although the serviceman tells the kids about Alan's presumed death, Nora is skeptical. After Nora left the house for today, Judy and Peter heard Jumanji's drumbeats, traced them to the attic, found the game and started to play the game. Judy played the game first and giant mosquitoes attack them. Peter played second and monkeys destroy their kitchen. Learning that the game will revert everything if the game ends, they continue the game despite the danger. Since Peter rolled doubles, he plays again. Peter rolls a five, releasing both a lion and Alan, who is now an adult. Alan locks the lion in a bedroom and realizes that he has returned to the real world. Alan chases & hugs Peter in excitement then turns afraid once Judy tells Alan the Parrish house been vacant for years. On the street, he encounters Carl, who now works as a police officer (he's been in the service since 1974) and clearly disliking his job and discovers that the town's economy decline is due to the factory's closure.
In the factory, Alan sees a homeless man and he reveals that Sam abandoned the business to search for his son until his death in 1991. Carol also continued the search until her own death, making Alan deeply regret the idea of ever running away from home. Judy & Peter continuously persuades Alan to play with them, but he refuses. Judy rolls again, thinking that it's her turn, but when her rolling the dice has no effect on the board, Alan realizes they are continuing the same game that he and Sarah started in 1969. Both Alan and Sarah have to play to finish the game. They find Sarah is now a faux-psychic who has turned into a recluse after being shunned by townspeople, which refused to believe her story about what happened to Alan, and was traumatized by his disappearance. Alan tricks her into rejoining Jumanji and her following move releases fast-growing vines and a giant deadly man-eating "pod".
After dealing with the pod and vines, Alan rolls and a big-game hunter named Van Pelt (resembling Alan's father) who is intent on killing Alan emerges as he is a product of the game itself. On Judy's next turn, a stampede (rhinoceros, African elephants, zebras and pelican) wrecks the house. A pelican took Jumanji and flew away so Alan chases it to a waterbody and Peter retrieves it. Later, Alan was suddenly arrested by Carl and goes along when sensing Van Pelt nearby. Peter gradually transforms into a monkey after trying to cheat. Peter, Sarah and Judy then battle Van Pelt in a local discount department store, but were then saved by Alan when he broke through the front windows in Carl's car. Alan apologizes to Peter for being hard on him while walking back home that is now completely overrun by jungle wildlife. Then a monsoon floods the house and two crocodiles attack the group. The house is drained of its water when Carl and Nora blast the door down. Alan sinks into an upper floor by quicksand, but was then saved when Judy's next turn cancels Alan's turn. Peter's turn releases big spiders, and Judy gets infected by a carnivorous plant. Finally, Sarah's turn triggers an earthquake breaks the house in two.
The game was about to end as Alan takes what turns out to be his final turn when Van Pelt reappears is about to shoot him. This time Alan doesn't run as he expresses his father's words. Van Pelt orders Alan to drop the dice; one of them got away, but stops on the number Alan needs to reach the end and wins the game just in time and his victory causes the jungle elements and Van Pelt to be sucked back into the board in a form of a whirlwind. Alan and Sarah then find themselves back in 1969 again as children, but with full memories of their lives after they started playing. Next, Alan sees Sam return home briefly as he forgot his speech notes and that gives Alan a chance to reconcile with his father and admits his responsibility for damaging the machine in the plant, and Carl is rehired. Sam allows his son to attend a local school if he wishes to do so. Alan goes looking for Judy and Peter, but Sarah reminds him that it's 1969, meaning Judy and Peter are not even born yet. Sarah gives their game tokens to Alan as a way of showing that they were never in the game. The two chains up Jumanji and throw it into a river. Sarah then kisses Alan and they begin a romantic relationship.
In the present day, Alan and Sarah are married and are expecting their first child. Alan has taken over the shoe business, Carl was promoted to plant supervisor, and Sam is retired, but still alive. Judy, Peter and their parents Jim & Martha were invited to meet with Alan and Sarah at a Christmas party. Although the kids have no memory about Jumanji the adults are happy to see them anyway. Alan and Sarah offer Jim a job at the shoe company and discourage the parents from taking a flight to their ski trip in Canada averting their deaths to repay for Judy & Peter's efforts in the previous timeline.
At a beach in another part of the Earth, two French-speaking young girls hear drumbeats while walking, unaware that the Jumanji board game is half-buried in the sand.
Cast[]
- Robin Williams as Alan Parrish
- Adam Hann-Byrd as Young Alan Parrish
- Bonnie Hunt as Sarah Whittle
- Laura Bell Bundy as Young Sarah Whittle
- Kirsten Dunst as Judy Shepherd
- Bradley Pierce as Peter Shepherd
- Bebe Neuwirth as Nora Shepherd
- David Alan Grier as Carl Bentley
- Jonathan Hyde as Sam Parrish\Van Pelt
Production[]
While Peter Guber was visiting Boston, he invited author Chris Van Allsburg, who lives in Providence, Rhode Island, to option his book. Van Allsburg wrote one of the screenplay's drafts, which he described as "sort of trying to imbue the story with a quality of mystery and surrealism."
Robin Williams was filming the movie at the same time he was filming a small supporting role in the film Nine Months.
Tom Hanks was the first choice to play the role of Alan Parrish. In addition to Hanks, actors such as Michael Keaton, Kevin Kline, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sean Connery and Dan Akyroyd were also considered for the role of Alan Parrish in the film.
Reception[]
Box Office[]
"Jumanji" opened at #1 at the box office, grossing $11,084,370 during its opening weekend. It earned $100,475,249 in the United States and Canada and an additional $162,322,000 overseas, bringing the worldwide gross to $262,797,249.
Critical Reception[]
"Jumanji" received mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 50% of 32 critics gave the film positive reviews, with a rating average of 5.6 out of 10. Based on 18 reviews, Metacritic posts an average rating of 39%. Van Allsburg approved of the movie despite the changes and its not being as "idiosyncratic and peculiar" as the book, declaring that "[t]he film is faithful in reproducing the chaos level that comes with having a jungle animal in the house. It's a good movie". Roger Ebert gave the film a rating of two in a half stars.
Videos[]
Trivia[]
- The creation of Jumanji board game was left unexplained. In 2021, a contribution video Jumanji: Level One is uploaded by Heather Fairbanks in a donation effort for terminal illnesses in Anchors Hospice of Michigan. The story is:
- In Sierra Leone Africa 1868, a shaman in a village of Zulu inhabitants, crafts a wooden board game called Jumanji for his boy as a fun activity. The game is initially made up of four corners where the player(s) pass through the dangerous jungle till they reach the center of the city of gold. Following this, a gang of poachers led by Van Pelt attack the settlement in search of gold. As the poachers burn the village to the ground and stealing valuable possessions, the hurt shaman throws the game cards in a fire formulating a black magic ritual that affects the board game, sucking Van and the poachers into Jumanji, in retaliation. Later, an English soldier named Robert scouting the ruined village then hears drumming noises, finding Jumanji, and brings it back to his base tent. Intrigued, Robert and his companion play Jumanji, the tokens move like magnets as they roll the dice, and the crystal ball reads them being hunted by an unseen beast in the mist; a nature's beauty that boils the player by touch, leading them to their deaths. A year later, in Hereford, Canada, 1869, Robert's son Caleb goes through his father's belongings and brings out Jumanji. He asks his younger brother Benjamin if he's interested in playing it, and their mother gets involve in it when Caleb drops the dice. Scenes shows them fighting a beast, a big spider, a monstrous plant, attempting to destroy Jumanji but its unbreakable, catching it being carried away in a river stream, and confronting Van Pelt himself. The family manage to finish the game and reserve its effects. Frightened by the power of Jumanji, the brothers bury it somewhere in the woods of Brantford, New Hampshire. When Benjamin asks, "What if someone digs it up?" Caleb says darkly, "May God have mercy on his soul".