Jumanji Information

Jumanji is a 1995 American fantasy adventure film directed by Joe Johnston. It is an adaptation of the 1981 children's book of the same name by Chris Van Allsburg. The film was written by Van Allsburg, Greg Taylor, Jonathan Hensleigh, and Jim Strain and stars Robin Williams, Bonnie Hunt, Kirsten Dunst, Bradley Pierce, Jonathan Hyde, Bebe Neuwirth, and David Alan Grier.

The story centers on 12-year-old Alan Parrish, who becomes trapped in a board game while playing with his best friend Sarah Whittle in 1969. Twenty-six years later, in 1995, siblings Judy and Peter Shepherd find the game, begin playing and then unwittingly release the now-adult Alan. After tracking down Sarah, the quartet resolve to finish the game in order to reverse all of the destruction it has caused.

The film was released on December 15, 1995. Despite the film receiving generally unfavorable reviews from critics, it was a box office success, earning $263 million worldwide on a budget of approximately $65 million and it became the 10th highest-grossing film of 1995.

A similar film, marketed as a spiritual successor to Jumanji, titled Zathura: A Space Adventure, was released in 2005 and was also adapted from a Van Allsburg book that was more directly connected to the Jumanji book.

It is part of the Jumanji franchise and spawned a direct sequel, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017), as well as an animated television series, which aired from 1996 to 1999.

Plot

In 1869, near Brantford, New Hampshire, two brothers bury a chest and hope that no one will ever find it.

A century later in 1969, Alan Parrish escapes a gang of bullies led by Billy Jessup and retreats to a shoe factory owned by his father, Sam. He meets Carl Bentley, an employee, who reveals a new shoe prototype he made by himself. Alan misplaces the shoe and damages a machine, but Carl takes responsibility and loses his job. After being attacked by Jessup's group, who also steal his bicycle, Alan follows the sound of tribal drumbeats to a construction site. He finds the chest containing a board game called "Jumanji" and brings it home. At home, after an argument with Sam about attending a boarding school, Alan plans to run away. Sarah Whittle, his friend, arrives to return his bicycle, and Alan shows her Jumanji and invites her to play. With each roll of the dice, the game piece moves by itself and a cryptic message describing the roll's outcome appears in the crystal ball at the center of the board. Sarah reads the first message on the board and hears an eerie sound. Alan then unintentionally rolls the dice after being startled by the chiming clock; a message tells him to wait in a jungle until someone rolls a 5 or 8. Alan is sucked into the game, and a colony of bats chases Sarah out of the mansion.

Twenty-six years later in 1995, Judy and Peter Shepherd move into the vacant Parrish mansion with their aunt Nora, after their parents died in an accident on a ski trip in Canada, the winter before. Soon after, Judy and Peter find Jumanji in the attic and begin playing it. Their rolls release a swarm of big mosquitoes and a troop of monkeys. The game rules state that everything will be restored when the game ends, so they continue playing. Peter's next roll releases a lion and an adult Alan. As Alan makes his way out, he meets Carl, who is now working as a police officer. Alan, Judy and Peter go to the now derelict shoe factory, where a tramp tells Alan that after his disappearance, Sam and his wife, Carol-Anne abandoned the business and searched for Alan, until their deaths just four years earlier.

Realizing they need Sarah to finish the game, the three locate her, now suffering posttraumatic stress disorder after Alan's disappearance, and they persuade her to join them. Sarah's roll releases fast-growing carnivorous plants, and Alan's next roll releases a big-game hunter, Van Pelt. Judy's next roll releases a stampede of various animals, and a pelican steals the game. Peter retrieves it, but Alan is arrested by Carl. Later, Van Pelt catches up to Alan's friends and steals the game. Peter, Sarah, and Judy follow Van Pelt to a department store, where they fight him, retrieve the game, and reunite with Alan. When the four return to the mansion, it is now completely overrun by jungle wildlife. They release numerous calamities, until Van Pelt arrives. When Alan drops the dice, he wins the game, causing everything that had happened as a result of the game to be reversed.

Alan and Sarah return to 1969 as children, but have full memories of the future events. Alan reconciles with his father and admits that he was responsible for the shoe that damaged the factory's machine. Carl is rehired, and Sam tells his son that he does not have to attend boarding school. Alan and Sarah throw Jumanji into a river and then share a kiss.

Twenty-six years later, Alan and Sarah are married and expecting their first child. Alan runs the factory after his parents retired (but are still alive). He and Sarah reunite with Judy and Peter (who have no memories of the game), and meet their parents Jim and Martha during a Christmas party. The Parrishes offer Jim a job and convinces the Shepherds to cancel their upcoming ski trip, averting their deaths, before they strike up a friendship with them.

On a beach, two French-speaking girls hear drumbeats as Jumanji lies partially buried in the sand.

Cast

• Robin Williams as Alan Parrish, a man trapped in Jumanji for 26 years
  • Adam Hann-Byrd as Young Alan
• Bonnie Hunt as Sarah Whittle, Alan's friend who is traumatized by Jumanji and devastated by Alan's disappearance
  • Laura Bell Bundy as Young Sarah
• Kirsten Dunst as Judith "Judy" Shepherd, Peter's older sister
• Bradley Pierce as Peter Shepherd, Judy's younger brother
• David Alan Grier as Carlton "Carl" Bentley, an employee at Sam's shoe factory and Alan's oldest friend, who later becomes a police officer
• Jonathan Hyde as Van Pelt, a big-game hunter from Jumanji who is dead set to hunt Alan and other players to prevent them from winning the game
  • Hyde also portrays Samuel Alan "Sam" Parrish, Alan's father
• Bebe Neuwirth as Nora Shepherd, Judy and Peter's aunt
• Patricia Clarkson as Carol-Anne Parrish, Alan's mother
• Malcolm Stewart as James "Jim" Shephard, Judy and Peter's father
• Annabel Kershaw as Martha Shepherd, Judy and Peter's mother
• Gary Joseph Thorup as William "Billy" Jessup, the leader of the bullies that picks on Alan for being friends with Sarah
• James Handy as the Exterminator
• Frank Welker provides the special vocal effects

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".

Tristar Pictures agreed to finance the film on the condition that Robin Williams play the starring role. However, Williams turned down the role based on the first script he was given. Only after director Joe Johnston and screenwriters Jonathan Hensleigh, Greg Taylor and Jim Strain undertook extensive rewrites did Williams accept. Johnston had reservations over casting Williams because of the actor's reputation for improvisation, fearing that he wouldn't adhere to the script. However, Williams understood that it was "a tightly structured story" and filmed the scenes as outlined in the script, often filming duplicate scenes afterwards where he was allowed to improvise with Bonnie Hunt.

Shooting took place in various New England locales, mainly Keene, New Hampshire, which represented the story's fictional town of Brantford, New Hampshire, and North Berwick, Maine, where the Olde Woolen Mill stood in for the Parrish Shoe Factory. Additional filming took place in Vancouver, British Columbia, where a mock-up of the Parrish house was built.

Special effects were a combination of more traditional techniques like puppetry and animatronics (provided by Amalgamated Dynamics) with state-of-the-art digital effects overseen by Industrial Light & Magic. ILM developed two new software programs specially for Jumanji, one called iSculpt, which allowed the illustrators to create realistic facial expressions on the computer-generated animals in the film, and another that for the first time created realistic digital hair, used on the monkeys and the lion. Actor Bradley Pierce (Peter) underwent three and a half hours of prosthetic makeup application daily for a period of two and a half months to film the scenes where he transformed into a monkey.

The film was dedicated to visual effects supervisor Stephen L. Price, who died before the film's release.

Release

Jumanji was released in theatres on December 15, 1995.

Home media

Jumanji was first released on VHS on May 14, 1996, and re-released as a Collector's Series DVD on January 25, 2000. This was followed by an initial Blu-ray release on June 28, 2011. The Blu-ray was re-released as a 20th Anniversary Edition on September 14, 2015 (with the same transfer found on the 2011 release). A restored version was released on December 5, 2017 on Blu-ray and 4K UHD to coincide with the premiere of the sequel.

Soundtrack

Commercial songs from film, but not on soundtrack

• "Una Voce Poco Fa"
  • Written by Gioacchino Rossini
  • Performed by Agnes Baltsa and the Vienna Symphony
  • Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Ian Marin
• "Night & Day"
  • Written by Cole Porter
• "Serenade in D, Op. 44"
  • Composed by Antonn Dvo?k
  • Performed by Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields
  • Conducted by Neville Marriner
• "Locomotive Breath"
  • Written by Ian Anderson
  • Performed by Jethro Tull
• "The Ballad of Gilligan's Isle" (Theme from Gilligan's Island)
  • Written by Sherwood Schwartz & George Wyle

Reception

Jumanji did well at the box office, earning $100.5 million in the United States and Canada and an additional $162.3 million overseas, bringing the worldwide gross to $262.8 million.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 53% from 36 reviews, with an average rating of 5.7/10. On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 39 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A?" on an A+ to F scale.

Van Allsburg of the Los Angeles Times approved of the film despite the changes from the book and its not being as "idiosyncratic and peculiar", 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."

Legacy

An animated television series was produced between 1996 and 1999. While it borrowed heavily from the film - incorporating various characters, locations and props, and modeling Alan's house and the board game on the way they appeared in the film - the series retcons rather than using the film's storyline. In the series version, on each turn the players are given a "game clue" and then sucked into the jungle until they solve it. Alan is stuck in Jumanji because he has not seen his clue. Judy and Peter try to help him leave the game, providing their motivation during the series. Sarah is absent from the series.

In 2005 Jumanji was listed 48 in Channel 4's 100 Greatest Family Films documentary just behind Dumbo, The Lion King and Spider-Man.

In 2011, Robin Williams recorded an audiobook for Van Allsburg's book's 30th edition to coincide its release.

In 2014, a game board prop from the movie was auctioned on eBay and sold for US$60,800.

Games

Jumanji is a board game originally published by Milton Bradley in the US and MB Spiele in Germany in 1995.

Jumanji is a North American-exclusive game for Microsoft Windows that was released on 1996 and based on the film. It was developed by Studio Interactive and published by Philips Media. It contains five different action-arcade-based mini-games that are based on popular scenes from the film. Clips of cutscenes from the film can also be viewed. There are five different mini-games that the player can choose from, with different rules and objectives. Animals from the film provide instructions to the player for each mini-game, except for the Treasure Maze mini-game, where the Jumanji board game spirit provides instructions instead. Notably, players cannot play the actual Jumanji board game from the film. All of these mini-games contain rounds (or levels) and when players reach a goal, that level is cleared and the player advances to a more difficult version of the mini-game. The player must try to score as many points as possible, and set the best high score.

A video game based on the film was released in Europe for the PlayStation 2 in 2006.

In 2007, Fujishoji released a Pachinko game, using clips from the film and also used 3D rendered CGI anime character designs for the game as part of the screen interaction.

Similar film

Zathura: A Space Adventure, the spiritual successor that was marketed as being from the same continuity with varied uses of the tagline, "From the world of Jumanji" was released as a feature film in 2005. Unlike the book Zathura, the film makes no references to the previous film outside of the marketing statement. Both films are based on books written by Chris Van Allsburg. With the films being based on books that take place in the same series, the films vaguely make reference to that concept from the novels by having a similar concept and themes.

Sequels

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

Template:Main article In July 2012, rumors emerged that a remake of the film was already in development. In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Columbia Pictures president Doug Belgrad said: "We're going to try and reimagine Jumanji and update it for the present." On August 1, 2012, it was confirmed that Matthew Tolmach would be producing the new version alongside William Teitler, who produced the original film.

On August 5, 2015, Sony Pictures Entertainment announced their plans to film a remake and set the release date as December 25, 2016. Internet reception to this announcement was negative, with some posters remarking that this announcement came too soon after the death of Williams. The news was also heavily criticized by Bradley Pierce and E! News, the latter of which stated that they felt that the remake was "unnecessary and kind of insulting". On January 14, 2016, it was announced that Jake Kasdan will direct the remake. On January 20, 2016, it was announced that the remake would be pushed back to July 28, 2017. In April 2016, Dwayne Johnson signed on to produce and star in the remake, while Variety, TheWrap and Deadline.com reported that Kevin Hart, Jack Black, and Nick Jonas were in early talks to co-star. In August 2016, Dwayne Johnson confirmed that the film would not be a reboot, rather a continuation of the 1995 film and that it would be filmed in Hawaii. In August, Johnson announced on Instagram that Karen Gillan has been cast in the film. In September 2016, Johnson released a concept art of his character "The Smoldering" Dr. Bravestone.

The film, officially titled Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, was released on December 20, 2017.

Jumanji 3

Jack Black, Dwayne Johnson, and Nick Jonas have discussed in interviews what a third installment would be about. Karen Gillan has also said that an alternate ending for Welcome to the Jungle would have left the door open for another film.

See also