FlipSide Blog | Screen Jeers: 'Jumanji' and 'Zathura'

Dan: Designing movies around board games seems like a sensible enough idea for Hollywood. Games are popular. Families are especially fond of them. Market a movie based around a board game to a family, and they?ll probably fork over the cash for four tickets without even considering the possibility (or probability) that the movie is going to be awful. Then, create a board game based around the movie and sell, sell, sell!

Let?s face it, board game movies do not have a good track record. Remember how ?Battleship? flopped this summer? This week, Caryn and I went back and took a look at two movies that, oddly enough, were based on books that are centered around magical board games.

First up is ?Jumanji,? the Robin Williams movie from 1995 that brought the jungle into the home of an unsuspecting family just trying to play a game. Two children, one of whom is played by Caryn?s favorite ?Spider-Man? actress Kirsten Dunst, discover a game in their new house and are sucked into playing it, unleashing wild animals, plants and ecosystems into their neighborhood. Also coming along through the game is Alan Parrish, played by Robin Williams, who had been transported to the jungle by the game when he was a little boy. The group eventually beats the game and everything goes back to normal, including Alan being able to transport back to his own time to live out his days happily ever after with his maybe/sorta girlfriend, the adult version of whom is played by Bonnie Hunt.

Ten years later came ?Zathura,? which basically follows the plot of ?Jumanji? except in space. In this one, two brothers who just can?t get along came across a board game that transports their house into deep space. As they dodge meteors and fend off alien invaders, the older brother, Walter (Josh Hutcherson, who would go on to play Peeta in ?The Hunger Games?), must learn to accept and get along with his little brother, Danny (Jonah Bobo). With the help of an astronaut with a really confusing storyline and their older sister, played by a pre-?Twilight? Kristen Stewart, the boys get the house back home.

Caryn, why don?t you take us through just what is wrong with these movies. Which was more preposterous?

Caryn: Both films were weird, but I think I liked ?Zathura? more, in the way I usually ?like? bad movies. I can get behind the sci-fi aspects of ?Zathura? because sci-fi movies make me happy, even if they are really bad.

The most irritating thing about ?Zathura,? without a doubt, was the bad acting. The Danny character in ?Zathura? was the most annoying. He repeated lines like a broken record. (Remember: ?Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry? and ?ZATHURA IS A BLACK HOLE! ZATHURA IS A BLACK HOLE!??) His reactions to the CGI aliens were completely non-believable. Both children definitely swore more than I did as a child.

Either Kristen Stewart is frozen in this scene from ?Zathura? or she?s rehearsing for Bella from the ?Twilight? movies. Tough to tell the difference.

And maybe you can explain how the astronaut was actually Walter at the end. How is that even possible? And what happens when people in the future play Zathura after Walter and Danny? What happens to the astronaut then? Is the astronaut still Walter? And why didn?t the astronaut disappear as soon as he arrived in the house, knowing that he was Walter and Walter was in the house? I don?t think Zathura got the space-time continuum thing quite right.

I?ve seen ?Jumanji? about a million times before, which probably tainted my viewing of it. I remember liking it the first couple times I saw it as a child. But a few more times proved the movie was just tiresome. It was your first time seeing ?Jumanji.? What did you think?

Dan: It?s definitely a tiresome movie, but looking back, I actually enjoyed it more than I did the painfully boring ?Zathura.? Usually, I side with the sci-fi story, too, but ?Zathura? was nothing short of boring. I was too busy wishing Josh Hutcherson would grow up, learn to act and win the Hunger Games. (Fun fact: A working title for ?Zathura? was initially ?Jumanji 2.? Marketing ploy, anyone?)

While ?Jumanji? was campy and littered with terrible CGI, it at least was adventurous. The scene in which the gang tries to survive a monsoon inside the house actually felt like a life-or-death situation. The ensuing fight pitting Robin Williams against the crocodile, though absurd, was a nice bit of adventurey action. This movie was at least able to keep my attention throughout. Plus, unlike the ending of ?Zathura,? in which the kids don?t have to do anything they hadn?t already been doing to return, Williams? character at least has to stand up to the specter of his father to cast the winning die and win the game.

The final act of ?Harry Potter and the Sorcerer?s Stone:? probably the best board-game adaptation in cinematic history.

Now, that by no means makes ?Jumanji? a good movie; after all, just about everything else is completely ridiculous. Any attempts at character-building and genuine storytelling fell flat on its face. The biggest example I can think of is the supposed relationship because Williams and Bonnie Hunt?s character. Throughout the movie, Williams kidnaps her and holds her hostage to play the game against her will. Then, as a coup de grace, after she runs to him in an attempt to protect him from the gun-wielding hunter trying to kill him, Williams actually brings her in and uses her as a meat shield. Yeah, sorry, I?m not buying a strong relationship involving someone who would not hesitate to place his love in the projected path of a bullet.

So let?s look big picture here: Why did these board-game movies fail so badly?

Caryn: I certainly didn?t expect board-game movies to be Oscar-winning material. And we?re, by far, not the audience intended for these contrived wastes of time.

Jumanji is terrible for exactly the reasons you said: The characters are flat, the romance is forced and it?s just plain goofy.

Zathura tries to be space-themed copy of Jumanji and it just doesn?t work. I think the same audience that watched Jumanji said, ?yeah, this is just Jumanji in space.?

I think both ?Zathura? and ?Jumanji? encourage youngsters to use their imagination when they play. And Zathura had some thinly veiled moral messages to convey: Work as a team, play nice with your siblings, don?t cheat at games, etc. So it?s got that going for it.

There aren?t very many board-game movies out there, but what would you recommend watching instead of these bargain bin mishaps?

Tim Curry and the cast of ?Clue? offer up a hilarious take on the classic board game. Check it out!

Dan: While there aren?t many board-game-related movies worth watching out there, there is one that is based off a popular game that continues to entertain year after year: ?Clue? from 1985. It?s delightfully absurd, it has all the lovable nonsense of ?Clue? with some legitimately entertaining characters and actors, including Tim Curry as the butler, Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White and Christopher Lloyd (long, long before subjecting himself to ?Love, Wedding, Marriage?) as Professor Plum. Yes, it?s ridiculous, but it?s the kind of ridiculousness you like seeing in a movie. Plus, the ending is one of a kind.

Source: http://www.yorkblog.com/flipside/2012/08/19/screen-jeers-jumanji-and-zathura/

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