"I swear man, if we survive, I am gonna kill you!"
Hello everyone!
Sadly, there was no Outlander this previous weekend as the show has apparently decided to leave us hanging (literally) to see the aftermath of the shocking revelation that was the end of The Ballad of Roger Mac.
Now, I'm a book reader, so I know what happens, and I've managed to gnaw my way through the re-read of The Fiery Cross as well, meaning I know which big points the series will attempt to hit going forward.
But STILL.
So while there is nothing to report on the Outlander front, I've been watching the occasional movie when time allowed.
Not much, you see, but just enough to keep interested in all the stuff happening on the big screen.
And while I may be behind on several more popular releases, I figured it couldn't hurt to cover one that had action, adventure, and a Jack Black-sized dollop of humour.
Jumanji: The Next Level awaits!
As I've already recapped the first of the new movies in this franchise, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, you'll find the link to that at the bottom of this page. It isn't absolutely necessary to watch it before you see The Next Level, but truth be told you won't understand half of the jokes in this one if you don't.
So for a brief recap: Spencer, Fridge, Martha and Bethany, four high schoolers, end up in detention and find an old game, Jumanji, which they plug in to play, only to get sucked right into the game itself and have to play their way across the levels there, grab this jewel from the resident Jumanji bad guy, and not die in the process (because they have three lives in-game each, but if they waste them all up, they die for real). At the end of their adventure, they destroy the game and walk away.
In The Next Level, they've all moved on from high school but are mostly keeping in touch, because the company who survives a homicidal jungle together, stays together, right?
Martha discovers, upon moving on to college from high school, that there are like-minded people out there who like her for who she is; Fridge is set to be an all-star athlete; Bethany is living her dream of backpacking and hiking about; and Spencer ...
Spencer is unhappy.
Apparently he's also cancelled several trips home from New York, but he heads back for the Christmas holidays because, well, Christmas, right? Once there, he realizes that his mother has taken her aged father in after a hip surgery, and the grandpa is none other than Danny DeVito.
Ohhhh, this is going to be goooooood.
Grumbling and groaning, he's one half of the comedic elderly duo, because Danny Glover forms the second half, Milo Walker, who used to own a restaurant with Grandpa Eddie back in the day, but the guys had a falling-out so Eddie is mopey about it, and Milo is ... telling him a long winded story in a very low, very sloooow voice.
Now, the kids are all meeting up at the old diner of the geezer's for breakfast, but Spencer is super late, so they eventually end up hoofing it to his house, where they only find the two old men, but no Spencer.
They do, however, find Jumanji down in the basement.
And naturally, the game sucks the lot of them in. Again.
Except wait. What's Bethany still doing there?
In a twist, the game (broken from the previous movie and its encounter with a bowling ball) doesn't allow them to pick their avatars, so they all turn up at random, and it's obvious not all of them made it in.
Well, Martha and Fridge did - Martha is still Ruby (Karen Gillan), her avatar from the previous round, but Fridge is Jack Black's Oberon this time around, to his lasting disappointment.
Who's Bravestone and Mouse then? Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart must have had a blast, because Danny DeVito becomes Bravestone, and Glover becomes Mouse. And they talk like them for the duration of the movie (my only regret: Glover never once gets to say 'I'm too old for this sh*t!).
On top of that, the two old timers don't even actually believe they're in a video game, and have trouble remembering the simplest of things, which anyone with an elderly relative will be able to relate to (because as much as we love them - and we truly do - it takes a whole new level of patience to have to explain something over and over, and over again, over the span of five minutes).
This game is also different from their first encounter, because nobody said anything about giant man-eating snakes, which take Oberon.
Hearing a plane, the four of them run towards it and encounter the NPC, Nigel, who explains that Jurgen the Brutal (a new bad guy, played conveniently by the Hound from Game of Thrones) has stolen a jewel from some of the elders that keeps Jumanji thriving and rich in food and other necessities meant for living. He's also the guy who killed Bravestone's parents when he was still a baby (cue a shot of Johnson with a very 60s style hairdo).
So the job is the same as the previous one: get the jewel, call out the name of the game, and they can leave.
Easy.
Except Nigel evicts them over a desert, where they run into some surly-looking ostriches, who kill Bravestone, and then return with a vengeance in a massive troop, forcing our explorers into desert buggies to try and outrun them. All four end up in one, driven by Bravestone, who recklessly (but also brilliantly) pulls off a Fast and Furious sequence of jumping over a canyon, getting them all to safety.
Now on foot, they find their way to the next level of the game, The Oasis, where Bravestone encounters a former lover, who tells him all about her jealous husband (who also happens to be Bravestone's one and only weakness), then runs off, which Martha deduces actually plays into the riddle Nigel gave them, because following "the flame", they find a weird ass pool of green-lit water surrounding a tree with the Jumanji Berry.
Martha goes to get it, falling into the water, and Fridge pulls her out, because the fruit weighs a ton, but this causes some sort of electric spark, which switches the two of them, so Fridge is now Ruby, and Martha is Oberon. By accident, they switch back again, and hightail it back to the others.
What were the others doing, you ask?
Well before they headed off for the fruit, the lot of them actually ran into Spencer (in a hilarious sequence where Grandpa Eddie heard someone yell 'thief!' and caught his own grandson, which got him killed in-game), who is an Asian pickpocket, Ming (Awkwafina), not Bravestone as he'd been hoping for, feeling lost and insecure in real life.
He, Eddie and Milo head to a camel stable where Spencer realizes Milo, or Mouse, can speak to animals this time around, being a linguist, and Grandpa Eddie, aka Bravestone, kicks ass of about a hundred guys outside, until Switchblade shows up.
Now on the run, with the fruit in tow, everyone but Bravestone wants to keep on going, but Bravestone insists he can take Switchblade - resulting in the lot of them getting a rocket dropped on their heads.
On camels, annoyed, and pissy, Eddie and Milo get into it because Milo retired way back when, leaving Eddie out to pasture, but Mouse is never a match for Bravestone, so it's not like he can do much. He can, however, translate later that the camels won't go any further after a certain point, so they're no on foot again, and need to make their way across rope bridges, where Oberon's geometry knowledge comes in handy.
Especially with mandrills chasing them.
I mean, we've had everything, why not have big ass homicidal monkeys, right?
For once, Milo doesn't waste breath on a long explanation and just insists they run like the wind; Martha jumps onto the wrong bridge, which results in her dying again, and Spencer, in Ming's form, drops down to a different level of the bridges, about to be devoured by the mandrills when his grandpa follows him to save his skinny butt.
Of course he also tosses the same skinny butt overboard when he's too enthusiastic about tossing the monkeys off, but Martha gets Spencer and they hightail it over to the other side; Oberon twists his ankle while Milo gets stuck and Bravestone cuts the bridge to be able to get them all across, sans monkeys, not that it really works.
What works is the unexpected appearance of a rider on a big black horse, who turns out to be Alex (Colin Hanks) and Bethany (the horse, natch). After being left alone, Bethany goes to Alex for help, and they now join the explorers to finish up the game.
They also make the executive decision, upon finding a green-glowing river, to switch identities, because everyone's been TERRIBLE at their avatars, so the configuration returns to the original four, Grandpa Eddie becomes Ming, and Milo the horse, who can't talk. Of course right afterwards, Ming and the horse get nabbed by Jurgen's men, so our team has to trail after them to the mountain fortress. Bravestone and Ruby climb up a frozen ledge to a secret entrance, while Alex, Oberon and Mouse pretend to be part of the entourage.
No, literally, Oberon and Mouse get mistaken for the Brothers Kababik, here to forge an alliance with Jurgen by way of bringing him their sister to marry.
Bravestone and Ruby get Eddie, but the jewel isn't in the vault, and while Alex dies twice before being able to save Milo the horse, Ruby then joins her "brothers" as Jurgen's bride - only for the lot of them to be exposed, and sentenced to death.
Bravestone runs after Jurgen while the rest deal with his goons, where Mouse remembers he has a radio and switches it on to start Ruby's kick-ass martial dance skills, including nunchucks this time around, so they clear the room pretty easily after that, and run out after Spencer, who is climbing up into the zeppelin Jurgen is using to escape.
Once there, he uses the Jumanji Berry, Jurgen's only weakness, to overpower him, and grabs the jewel from the bad guy while said bad guy plummets to Earth. Eddie hitches a ride on the Milo express - because the horse has WINGS! - and they rush up to help Spencer, who throws them the jewel so they can fly higher than the cloud bank and show it to the sun. The lot of them scream JUMANJI! and just like that, it's game over.
Nigel meets them to take the jewel off their hands, but before they can leave, Milo makes an announcement: he's not coming with them.
The reason he looked up Eddie after all the years is because he's sick, and doesn't have much time left in the real world, but in-game, he can look after Jumanji for as long as need be, so everyone says a tearful goodbye, and I swear I'm tearing up just typing this, thinking that Danny Glover gets a role like that.
For the rest, they return to the real world, and Spencer teaches his grandpa how to play an actual video game, then they head over to the diner, where Eddie uses some of his Bravestone smolder to fluster the current owner, and offers her his services to help around if need be.
The four adventurers, meanwhile, agree to NEVER return to Jumanji - for real this time - and to always stay close.
All's well that ends well - until, that is, a repairman for the heating system arrives at Spencer's house, finds the game in the basement, and apparently touches it. Which then unleashes the creepy jungle drums, and the four kids walk out of the diner to a troop of ostriches running by down the street.
DUN DUN DUUUUUUUN!
Extremely funny, full of adventure, and incredibly entertaining, the sequel delivers just as much, if not more, than its predecessor, maybe even more, because DeVito and Glover obviously had the time of their lives, and watching Johnson and Hart impersonate them was beyond spectacular. A big shout out to Jack Black, too, who probably impersonated the most people in this one, because he was Fridge, Martha AND Bethany at one point.
I'd also like to point out that, since Jurgen functioned like the rest of the avatars, it might be that he was an ACTUAL person, too, so we may be seeing more of him if we ever get any continuation, which Johnson has said was a possibility.
We'll see!
But if you need something silly to laugh at, especially in these times, why don't you join the comedians in this movie as they make their way across Jumanji? Again?
I promise you'll enjoy it!
xx
*images and video not mine
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