Control Review: Jumanji the Next Level

I, Dalton Lewis, watched the Jumanji sequel last night. I don’t know what the hell I should think of these movies: movies that merely want to entertain in the most superficial ways possible. The movie makes a good decision showing a young man unhappy in his life in New York at the beginning, but then it descends into each actor playing a different outrageous person and then switching bodies a lot to display the acting skills of the thespians.

The body switching is a neat trick because it enables Jack Black to be a strong, arrogant man and then a pretty, charming girl. It enables Kevin Hart to be an old man for a while and bicker with Dwayne Johnson, still making fun of his Rocky persona from his wrestling days. He switches admirably from an old man to a young white man who is trying to become someone in life. Awkwafina plays several characters, too, and so does Karen Gillan, who — in the second half of the movie — is finally fully clothed for a bit — finally.

I wanted something more than wacky hijinks and silly comedy. Why? Why can’t I just enjoy the silly movies with silly action sequences and nothing else? I don’t even watch all of the literary movies with important talking and dramatic scenes of smoldering intensity. I mostly watch comic book movies and horror/slasher movies. I mostly watch procedural television shows and the Arrowverse shows. I do read stories that are considered to be literature, but I also read Warhammer 40k pulp sci-fi stories.

The story — six people enter a video game and become avatars and have three lives or they die. The game is a fun way to have ridiculous action sequences and let characters face their problems. It has a desert chase scene, a jungle chase scene, and some winter chase scenes. It really is a bunch of action sequences in which the characters have wacky physical comedy. If you want to watch something like that you will be entertained.

Is this what we always were, most movies not mattering except to entertain in the most superficial level? I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing. I just remember Nirvana trying to make real art with their music. I remember Claire Danes in My So-Called Life and Romeo and Juliet making real literature in her movies. I remember Harry Potter being a blast of real art instead of a conventional silly story of heroes defeating a wizard and saving the planet. I remember George R. R. Martin showing everyone that low fantasy made for better, more character-based stories than the high fantasy I grew up on. I just don’t think that we have that in our current crop of movies. I’m sorry. I want more depth and significance from our stories.

Thanks, and take care, friends.