Jumanji is a 1995 American urban 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 directed by Joe Johnston, written by Greg Taylor, Jonathan Hensleigh and Jim Strain, and stars Robin Williams, Kirsten Dunst, David Alan Grier, Bonnie Hunt, Jonathan Hyde and Bebe Neuwirth. The special effects were provided by Industrial Light & Magic for computer graphic elements and Amalgamated Dynamics for animatronics components.
The story centers on 12-year-old Alan Parrish, who is trapped in Jumanji while playing the game with his friend Sarah Whittle in 1969. Twenty-six years later siblings Judy and Peter Shepherd begin playing and unwittingly release the now-adult Alan. After tracking down Sarah, the quartet resolve to finish the game in order to undo all of the destruction it has wrought.
Jumanji was shot in Keene, New Hampshire, though the story is set in the fictional town of Brantford. Additional filming took place in Vancouver, British Columbia. Jumanji was released on December 15, 1995. Despite its lukewarm critical reception, the movie was a box office success, earning $262,797,249 worldwide on a budget of approximately $65 million, and was the tenth highest-grossing movie of 1995. In 2005, a spiritual sequel to Jumanji called Zathura was released; it, too, was adapted from a Van Allsburg book.
Plot[]
In 1869, two boys bury a mysterious chest, which produces the sound of beating drums, in the woods. One hundred years later, 12-year-old Alan Parrish (Adam Hann-Byrd) escapes from a group of bullies to a shoe factory owned by his father, Sam (Jonathan Hyde). After meeting Carl (David Alan Grier) and being lectured by his father, Alan leaves, and carelessly puts a shoe (which Carl made to show Sam) on a conveyor belt which accidentally damages a machine, Sam's employee Carl takes responsibility and the blame and he is dismissed. The bullies later attack Alan and steal his bicycle. Alan follows the sound of tribal drumbeats to a construction site, where he finds a chest containing a board game called Jumanji, and takes the game home.
After an argument with his father about attending a boarding school, Alan plans to run away until his friend Sarah (Laura Bell Bundy) arrives to return his bicycle, and they begin playing Jumanji. With each roll of the dice, the player's piece moves by itself and a cryptic message appears in a crystal ball in the center of the board describing the outcome of the roll. Alan's first roll results in a message telling him that he will spend time in a desolate place until someone rolls 5 or 8. Alan is sucked into the board, and a group of bats force Sarah out of the house.
Twenty-six years later, 13-year-olds Judy (Kirsten Dunst) and Peter Shepherd (Bradley Pierce) move into the vacant Parrish house with their aunt Nora (Bebe Neuwirth) after their parents Jim (Malcolm Stewart) and Martha (Annabel Kershaw) died in an automobile accident. Judy and Peter hear Jumanji 's drumbeats and play the game in the attic, causing giant mosquitoes to attack, and a troupe of monkeys wrecking their kitchen. The game states that everything will be restored when it ends, so they continue playing. Peter's next roll releases both a lion and Alan (Robin Williams), who is now an adult. Alan locks the lion in a bedroom and heads to his father's factory. On the way, he meets Carl, who has become a police officer. In the now derelict factory, a homeless man reveals that Sam was distraught after Alan's disappearance and abandoned the business to search for him until his death five years earlier. The factory's closure devastated the town's economy.
While watching Judy and Peter play, Alan soon realizes that they are continuing the game that he and Sarah (Bonnie Hunt) started, and he joins in. Upon discovering a devastated Sarah, they persuade her to help finish the game. Sarah's move releases fast-growing man-eating vines, and Alan's next roll causes a big-game hunter named Van Pelt (Hyde) to hunt Alan, until he runs out of ammunition. When he returns, he steals the game to lure Alan to him. Peter, Sarah, and Judy subdue him at a department store and manage to retrieve the game, but when the four return to the mansion, now completely overrun by jungle wildlife, they release one calamity after another, until finally an earthquake destroys the house. As Van Pelt corners Alan and prepares to kill him, Alan makes the winning roll, causing everything that has happened as a result of the game to be reversed.
After returning to 1969, Alan and Sarah are children once again, but have full memories of the game's events. Alan reconciles with Sam and reveals that he damaged the factory's machine. Carl gets his job back, and Sam tells his son that he does not have to attend the boarding school. Realizing that Judy and Peter have not yet been born, Alan and Sarah throw the Jumanji board into a river, weighed down with bricks. Sarah and Alan begin a romantic relationship as they kiss.
In the present, Alan and Sarah, now married and expecting their first child, meet the Shepherds for the first time at a Christmas party. Alan and Sarah offer Jim a job at Parrish Shoes, which Alan took over after his father retired (who is still alive), convincing him and Martha to cancel their upcoming skiing trip to Canada, thereby preventing their deaths.
At a beach in another part of the world, two young French-speaking girls hear drumbeats while walking, as Jumanji lies buried in the sand.
Cast[]
- Robin Williams as Alan Parrish, a man trapped in Jumanji for twenty-six years
- Bonnie Hunt as Sarah Whittle, Alan's friend who is devastated due to his disappearance
- Kirsten Dunst as Judy Shepherd, a young girl in the Shepherd family and Peter's elder sister
- Bradley Pierce as Peter Shepherd, a young boy in the Shepherd family and Judy's younger brother
- David Alan Grier as Carl Bentley, Alan's oldest friend and an employee at Sam's shoe factory who later becomes a police officer
- Jonathan Hyde as Sam Parrish, Alan's father; and Van Pelt, a big-game hunter from the game
- Bebe Neuwirth as Nora Shepherd, Judy and Peter's aunt and legal guardian
- Adam Hann-Byrd as the younger Alan Parrish
- Laura Bell Bundy as the younger Sarah Whittle
- Malcolm Stewart as Jim Shepherd, Judy and Peter's father
- Annabel Kershaw as Martha Shepherd, Judy and Peter's mother
- Patricia Clarkson as Carol-Anne Parrish, Alan's mother
- Frank Welker as the provided voice of Special Vocal Effects
Filming[]
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".
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 Antonín Dvořák
- 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 $100,475,249 in the United States and Canada and an additional $162,322,000 overseas, bringing the worldwide gross to $262,797,249.
The film earned mixed reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 50% of 32 critics gave the film positive reviews, with a rating average of 5.6 out of 10. Metacritic posts an average rating of 39%, based on 18 reviews. Van Allsburg approved the movie despite the changes and its not being as "idiosyncratic and peculiar" as the novel, declaring that "the film is faithful in reproducing the chaos level that comes with having a jungle animal in the house. It's a good movie.
Legacy[]
A television series was produced between 1996 and 1999. While it borrowed heavily from the movie, incorporated various characters, locations and props, and modeled Alan's house and the board game on the way they appeared in the film, the series rebooted rather than continued the movie's storyline. In the television 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 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.
In 2014, a game board prop from the movie was auctioned on eBay and sold for US$60,800.
Trivia[]
- This is the first film to have the Sony Pictures Entertainment byline in the TriStar Pictures logo.