Jumanji - 1995

 I rather liked it, it was bizarre but funny and warm.

In 1869 two kids bury a box and in 1969 Alan Parrish finds it, with a board game inside that he takes home. He’s a rich kid wiht problems, almost ready to run away from home because he thinks his father doesn’t like him or understand him, but then a friend visits who can hear the druns beating, so they play Jumanji instead, together. 

“Jumanji is a game for those who seek to find, a way to leave their world behind”. 

She feels too old to play a board game (:/) but the token moves by itself. 

“At night they fly, you better run, these winged things are not much fun” and then his token moves and he’s like “Oh no the game thinks I rolled” - “what do you mean, the game thinks?” To him, the game says:

“In the jungle you must wait, until the dice read five or eight”, and he’s sucked into the game, yelling for her to roll the dice, but bats fill the room, Sarah screams and runs away scared.

26 years later, the house is for sale, bought by Nora, a woman who must take care of Peter and Judy, her brother’s kids, because he died with his wife. Alan is believed to be dead. 

Peter never talks to anyone but Judy, and she always lies. 

Now she hears the drums but Nora doesn’t. The kids find the game, but two tokens are stuck. Judy battles the huge mosquitos away, but the monkeys destroying the kitchen stay there.

Also written on the game: “adventurers beware: do not begin unless you intend to finish. The exciting consequences of the game will vanish only when a player has reached Jumaji and called out its name”.

Peter rolls a 5 and a beautiful lion scares them, but a strange man appears to help: long hair and beard, clothed with… leather and leaves? Alan’s room is still  as it was, left untched (who knows why, I see no reason for Nora not to use it… maybe it’s simply that she didn’t have time to think about it yet, she probably would have later). Alan is very happy to be back home, but he has no idea how much time has passed, and he calls for mom and dad… When he’s told that it’s 1995 he runs to find his parents, but his father’s factory is in ruins. Both parents died in 1991, his father loved him and spent everything to find him. 

The bugs that came out of Jumanji keep hurting people, and the monkeys create a lot of trouble. To finish the game, they also need Sarah because there are four tokens on the board. Sarah is terrified of the game and has had lots of therapy to convince herself it wasn’t real. 

For Sarah there’s vicious vines, for Alan a hunter with a rifle. For Judy it’s a huge stampede of various animals, and a bird steals the game. 

Peter tries to cheat to end the game and is now quite hairy and with a tail. 

The hunter has a new, modern weapon and shoots at Sarah too, obsessed with shooting Alan. The vines took over the house, and not just that. Sarah’s turn, it’s a monsoon in the house, togeether with a huge crocodile. For Alan, the floor becomes quicksand. Judy goes back a turn stopping it but Alan’s stuck in the  floor. 

Peter’s turn: lots of giant spiders. Judy is stung by a flower (not sure where it came from, the vicious one from the vines was huge, this one wasn’t, is it the same?). Luckily the spiders go away because the whole house is separated in the middle. That was Sarah, so now it’s Alan’s turn. The hunter tries to shoot him and Sarah runs in front of him, but Alan won the game so everything vanishes, and Alan and Sarah are back in 1969, in their young kids bodies, and Alan hugs his father. They throw the game in the water…

Years later, Alan and Sarah are married, and waiting for Judy and Peter to attend their party with their parents. Both Alan and Sarah yell NO when they talk of a trip to Canada, so they won’t go, won’t die, and they’ll keep living with their kids.

Kirsten Dunst as Judy  — I didn’t know she was in this movie, but she has the same face, I recognized her immediately :)

Robin Williams as Alan Parrish

Bonnie Hunt as Sarah

Bradley Pierce as Peter