Welcome to the jungle, kids! The name itself gives you goosebumps if you were a 90’s kid! Four detention-bound teenagers are thrust into a mysterious game in the first “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” trailer, literally forced into the bodies of their avatars — played by Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan and Jack Black.
“I think we got sucked into Jumanji and we’ve become the avatars that we chose,” Johnson’s geeky Spencer observes after they land in the jungle with new identities. Instead of a board game, however, the Sony-Columbia reboot features Jumanji as a retro video game console. Judging from the trailer, unlike its 1995 predecessor, the film appears to lean quite heavily on comedy in addition to action and adventure.
The once-scrawny Spencer finds himself as a buff world explorer, though he realizes he doesn’t have his allergy medication in the pollen-filled overgrowth. Gillan’s Martha points out that there’s no reason her character should be “wearing half a shirt and short shorts in the jungle,” and Hart’s “Fridge,” a rude jock, deals with missing “the top two feet” of his body.
And particularly humorous is Black, whose teenage counterpart is a pretty, blond popular girl forced into the body of “an overweight, middle-aged man” who “just can’t even with this place.” The foursome discover that “you don’t just play Jumanji — Jumanji plays you,” according to the synopsis. “They’ll have to go on the most dangerous adventure of their lives, or they’ll be stuck in the game forever.”
“Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” which also stars Nick Jonas and Bobby Cannavale, hits theaters Dec. 20. We can’t wait!!
