Product: Jumanji [VHS] (1995)
Rating: 1.0
A waste of resources
Chris Van Allsburg's brisk, haunting storybook is turned into yet another Robin Williams vehicle about getting in touch with your feelings. Williams stars as Alan, a guy trapped for 26 years in the magical board game Jumanji. When orphans Kirsten Dunst and Bradley Pierce find the game and roll the dice, they release Alan as well as various marauding beasts that flatten the sleepy suburbs. The movie gives Alan a cold father who comes back to haunt him in the form of a psychotic game hunter (both are played by Jonathan Hyde). The hunter, one can't help noticing, has a big gun. Freudians should have a field day with the movie: It's crammed with phallic/vaginal threats, plus constant images of cathartic violation. The animals, demolishing suburban propriety, are primal therapists.Bonnie Hunt turns up as Alan's now-grown-up childhood sweetheart, who must spell out the movie's subtext: The stampeding beasts, and Jumanji itself, are manifestations of Alan's repressed anger at Dad. Why spend $65 million and thousands of hours sweating over computers to make a banal fable about the hazards of bottling up your anger? The animals do put on a show, but some of them -- particularly the lion and the monkeys, the ones with the most articulation in their features -- look jerky and plasticized. In format, "Jumanji" is a mild retread of "Jurassic Park" (the director, Joe Johnston, is supposed to direct the third "JP"), complete with the nuclear family of the guy, the woman, and the two parentless kids who all come together while fighting or fleeing from computer-generated critters. It was said to be too scary for kids, but the scariest thing about it is that it took three guys to write a screenplay this repetitive and psychologically glib.