VGFlicks: Jumanji: The Next Level (Part 3)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

It’s the final level!

Storming the Stronghold

Always good to get together and plan the last steps.
The campfire is just for comfort, too bad Milo can't enter.

If the group wants to finish the game, they must rescue Eddie (currently using Ming Fleetfoot) and Milo (currently playing as Cyclone, the horse). Spencer (back as Bravestone), Fridge (back as Mouse Finbar), Martha, and Bethany (back as Prof. Sheldon Oberon) are down to one life left. In the latter’s case, her avatar had already lost two, even though it was being played by someone else. Guess lives are non-transferable. Alex still has three. All of them are scared, but must be ready for the final battle. Spencer and Martha, playing action heroes, will climb the mountain using equipment from Fridge’s Backpack of Holding, sneak into the fortress and save Eddie. Meanwhile, Alex, Fridge and Bethany will sneak in.

Pictured: "Augustus" and "Tomatoli Kababik".
Actually a girl in a man's body, and an athlete in a
small guy's body.

Alex inserts himself into the caravan of people walking into the fortress. Fridge and Bethany try the same, but they’re stopped by a guard who asks if they’re the Brothers Kababik. Time to LARP and roll for persuasion. Not only does that work, they even manage to sell the lie that they’re “brothers from different mothers” (since Fridge’s character is Black, and Bethany’s is white). Fridge even ends up having to play along to the guards’ claims that the Brother Kababik he is pretending to be is a eunuch. Geez, that was awkward. And then he still gets offered cake, the very thing that can kill his character. Yup, Jumanji has it out for the guy.

Alex finds his way to the room where Cyclone is held captive. The path is covered in pressure pads that release death traps, and he falls very quickly to one of them. It’s okay, he still has two liv-oh wait, no, just one. Third time’s the charm and he frees the horse, but not without seeing Cyclone’s character sheet first.

Alex has to be extremely careful. He's a family father now.
He has several more reasons not to die in Jumanji.

And since they're basically action heroes, they can have that
entire conversation while taking a break from climbing a
whole damn cliffside.

While Spencer and Martha are climbing up the cliffside, she asks why he never went to see her, and why he ended their relationship. He admits that he felt insecure after seeing just how outgoing and extroverted she had become through university life. She, in turn, admits that it’s been hard for her to keep that image and she’s worried her new social circles will see the shy girl she used to be – and it feels like it’s only with Spencer that she can truly be herself. Huh, guess Jumanji had lessons for the two of them after all, or at least it needed the two of them together to deliver it.

Slow... steady... This mission isn't impossible.

With their love renewed, the two free Eddie, and the three head over to steal the Falcon Jewel. They ONCE AGAIN have to explain to Eddie that he is playing a character and has to use that character’s skills… even though when he was freed, he showed, through Ming, encyclopaedic knowledge of safes and how to break them. The safe with the Falcon Jewel is guarded by hyenas, so Spencer and Martha descend Eddie from above – but when Spencer’s grandpa opens the safe, the Jewel is gone.

The Final Fight

Come on, Martha! Take the jewel, and run!

Bethany and Fridge’s lucky Persuasion streak almost runs out when they meet face-to-face with Jurgen, wearing the Jewel around his neck; he demands to see their sister, Gwendolyn Kababik, whom he is marrying. Martha arrives at that moment to continue the masquerade, but it doesn’t matter. It gets interrupted seconds before she can talk Jurgen into handing over the Jewel, by a telegram saying that the Kababik family couldn’t actually make it.

I did hear about The Rock's acting contract being about
how he allegedly can't lose a fight. What does this count
as, then?

A fight ensues, with Spencer coming in to save the day with Bravestone’s muscles. He tries to fight Jurgen… who barely flinches at the punches before throwing the muscular avatar across the room. Come on, you knew Jumanji wouldn’t make it that easy. Spencer notices a stain on his pocket, where the Jumanji Berry got squished in the fight. When he takes it out, Jurgen gets scared and leaves, but not before ordering all the intruders killed. That’s fine, Ruby Roundhouse can deal with all the mooks – especially after Fridge pulls a boombox from his backpack that plays, of course, Big Mountain’s Baby I Love Your Way. Martha, in Dance Battler mode, stays behind to kick all kinds of ass while Spencer chases down Jurgen, who climbs aboard a zeppelin.

Wouldn't be a good time to fall.

The hero physique allows Spencer to chase down the zeppelin, climb from a rope, and sneak aboard. I don’t think I’ve thought of mentioning it, but everything in this movie is bigger – both the setpieces and the action scenes are more impressive. The deaths were already seeped with black comedy in the previous film, and that got kicked up a slight notch here too. Serial escalation is a thing for movies, but some franchises escalate faster than others – to me, the “video game Jumanji” duology (soon trilogy) escalates just right.

Also, it begs the question of when, exactly, this character
was created in (or got stuck in) Jumanji.

Spencer is attacked by Jurgen, but he avoids the attacks and slams the Jumanji Berry in the guy’s chest, at the left pec… which causes an old-timey character sheet to pop out, with the Berry as the warlord’s sole weakness. Are we gonna address that the boss has something the player characters have? No? Okay, I guess we’ll keep that for the sequel coming out this year; the wait better have been worth it! The fruit stuns Jurgen, who turns into a very easy fight. Spencer crashes the two of them through the zeppelin’s window and manages to take the Jewel and catch a rope to stay safe, while the Brutal falls to his death.

It's the two new characters (both humans and Jumanji
player characters) who do the final step to save the day.
Kinda poetic, really.

During the fight, the zeppelin got turned around, struck a tower of the Stronghold, then crashed into a mountain. Cyclone (using Fridge as translator) tells Eddie to get on his back. The horse’s special skill? Flight. It runs, jumps into the air, and sprouts wings. They fly towards Spencer, who tosses the Jewel at them; they rise above the clouds, show the stone to the Sun, and everyone yells JUMANJI! Which means that they've won the game!

Farewells and new beginnings

Yeah, I'm a bit uneasy with the turn of events, but the movie
justifies it every way it can; Milo doesn't have long left in
the real world, plus he just got the power to fly. That's...
That's kind of a hard offer to turn down.

Upon victory, the team respawns on a snowy field, with Nigel showing up on a sled carried by dogs. The players will return home by shaking the NPC’s hand… but Milo neighs. Fridge translates that since Milo is dying in the real world, and has just learned to fly, he chooses to stay in Jumanji. Eddie and Milo tell their final farewells, knowing that they may be apart but will never forget each other. Eddie hugs Cyclone, and Milo leaves with his wings. …All I can think of is that someone in the real world is probably gonna notice that disappearance, if he’s not coming back.

The others all shake hands with Nigel to leave. They reappear in Spencer’s basement, with Eddie truly shaken by the experience. Later, he admits to his grandson that he was wrong to think that getting old sucks, and he has found new appreciation for getting that far in life.

I wouldn't believe what just happened either.

Sure, Eddie has learned to appreciate his old age, but he
is still a guy who needs to keep himself busy, and will look
for work wherever he can find it.

That evening, Spencer and his grandpa rejoin Fridge, Martha and Bethany at Nora’s formerly Milo & Eddie’s. Poor Fridge, he’s so traumatized by his Jumanji adventures that he can’t even eat a bite of cake in the real world. Eddie hadn’t set foot in that place after he sold it, but he’s proud to see that Nora keeps a frame of him and Milo, the previous owners. He meets Nora Shepherd, the owner and- Wait. That name’s familiar. Is that… Yes! That’s literally Nora, the aunt of the two kids in the 1995 Jumanji movie! Same actress, Bebe Neuwirth, too! Now that’s an unexpected cameo. She says that she’s been struggling ever since her manager quit (to somewhere that’s always sunny – Philadelphia), so Eddie offers to help. He even flashes the Smoldering Intensity stare – a successful one, when he has failed to do it as Bravestone.

All's well that end well!

...OR DOES IT????

The young adults all agree to never go back into Jumanji, and to stay friends forever. Then there’s a mid-credits scene of the heater repairman arriving at the Gilpin household. He and Spencer’s mother see the broken console, and the guy approaches it. Then, right as they were leaving Nora’s, Spencer and the others barely avoid a herd of ostriches running down the snowy December streets of New Hampshire…

Sequel hook! Yeah, the wait better be worth it, it’s been…

Nah, just seven, but those seven sure feel like 84!

Final words

I stand by my word that good sequels build upon the foundations set by the films that precede them. And like any good sequel, Jumanji: The Next Level upped the ante just right. Bigger setpieces and action scenes; funnier moments overall, with a lot of deaths within Jumanji that are even more darkly comedic. Hell, even the throwbacks to memorable scenes from the previous film were really funny, like Fridge freaking out at being offered cake.

It's never too late to mend a friendship; but also, never be
so stubborn as to keep a repairable bridge broken.

Overall, it does feel like this movie had a better idea of what it wants to do with the concept, and building off of what was set up in the previous film allowed it to do so. A few of the previous protagonists had new lessons to learn, and the two new ones were closely tied to a lesson they had to learn together about their broken friendship and the ways reacted to it – why Milo retired, and why Eddie has been bitter ever since. Not to mention the sheer amount of comedy derived from having two elderly men with some memory issues having to be repeatedly told that they’re in a video game, how those games work, and how these two men’s quirks (Eddie being a hothead, Milo being too slow to get to the point) impact the way they “play” their characters.

Johnson plays the insufferable elder jerk surprisingly well!
And Hart plays well the meandering talker type.

And, of course, let’s not forget that it once again allowed Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart to play characters that are wildly different to their usual! Almost everyone gets to have fun with the role-swapping, though the level varies from an actor to the next – Karen Gillan only gets two minutes, at best, playing someone else than Martha in Ruby Roundhouse’s body, while the other “Jumanji character” actors, Awkwafina included (and Nick Jonas excluded), end up having to juggle basically two roles. It’s great, and it shows the actors’ versatility. And unlike some reviewers, I don’t think I was ever confused by the swapping around of personalities since such events only technically happen twice in the film, so it’s not that tough to follow.

Glitchy water? Nah, it's working exactly the way the
darn video game intended.

Now, are there other missed opportunities? Well, a lot more could have been done with the concept of a glitchy Jumanji, though I guess the theory I’ve come up with (the game is only pretending to be broken) makes it all makes sense. Still feels like more could have happened, but then again, having to fight literal glitches would have probably been too much. As for the whole thing with Milo never leaving Jumanji, living on as a black pegasus… it opens a swath of questions and implications that I’m not entirely sure about (or comfortable with). But whatever. In short, not a lot of gripes, this one’s hella fun.

Maybe Bravestone is kind of a dick, maybe Finbar is entirely
submissive to the action hero (which Fridge would never be).
Either way, I predict that the PCs meeting their players in the
real world will lead to frictions in the group of PCs.

My hopes for the film coming out this December? Well, we know that Jumanji will invade the real world again. The actors of the players and their avatars are returning, so I imagine the young adults interacting with their player characters. I could see the Jumanji PCs being complete opposites of the ones that played them, and the players having to deal with those different personalities. All while facing an onslaught of animals. The detail of Spencer’s mom and the repairman being involved could be expanded upon, too. Danny DeVito and Bebe Newitrth are returning as well; that’s gonna be intriguing. Finally, I bet the film will reveal what’s up with Jurgen having a character sheet (Dwayne Johnson has since spoiled that Jurgen is, or used to be, an avatar). Guess we’ll see then.

That’s far in the future. For now, I’ve got another film to focus on, so join me next Friday for the second of this year’s three film reviews!