Jumanji (1995) Fun Movie, the Re-Watch Was Not Bad

Jumanji (1995)

In light of recent events, many people have been re-watching Robin Williams content from over the years. Robin Williams was very talented, but most of the time I did not prefer his comedy style. I decided to watch this film last night because I wanted to see something light hearted. After a long day of work and the stress of life, seeing an easy to watch film helps the night wind down.

The movie itself features the story of a boy who is punished by the decisions he makes as a child. His actions lead to him getting beat up by bullies for his name sake, getting a man fired from the factory, and sent away to boarding school. Now I will agree that not all of these things are in his control and his actions are not different than expected for a child of his age. In fact, I enjoy the beginning of this film because it’s a way to teach people about the gravity of their actions even at a young age.

The premise of this film is very odd because you start out with some dramatic irony. You know that the game is bewitched, but you don’t know anything about the previous players that were determined to get rid of it. You know they lived in the 1860’s and besides the civil war going on, there was not much for a young man to get interested in… Now this is a harsh criticism for a film that was has a target audience of 10 years of age. The important part is that curiosity leads to adventure.

The adventure for the character of Robin Williams seems a bit unfair compared to the rest of the plagues in the game. Helen Hunt had to continue playing the game in order for him to return. My real question is how he survived the jungle for 26 years at such a young age with little to no skills to speak of. Either way Robin Williams portrays a great comedic character that still hasn’t reached manhood and only wants to see his family when he returns. He is able to connect with the children easily because of this fact and it allows them to create several layers to their relationship.

Analytic arguments aside, Jumanji is fun to watch even so long after the years when I saw this in theaters. I have to train myself to not over think these types of movies. I really spend a large amount of time wondering how Robin Williams never noticed that Van Pelt (the hunter) looked exactly like his father or if it was meant to be symbolic of his father slaying his dreams. That would be a hard reality to face for 26 years in the jungle, having the only other human connection being your father and he trying to kill you. 

Sometimes I also wonder about them just simultaneously releasing a movie about a board game in order to make money off of an actual board game. It wouldn't be the first time it has happened. When it first came out I remember it was like $20 and only my rich friends could afford that. Is it a movie about a man and his relationship with his father, or a promotional tool to test the waters with movie products. 

300: A Film Made Without Consequence or Responsibility

300: Rise of an Empire

It doesn't take long to remind yourself why you both love and hate 300. You both love and hate the ridiculousness of the battles. How a man can fight five against one easily. How a woman can cut a mans throat, then the back of his head and take it clean off with just a knife. It would seem ridiculous for a strong woman or man to be able to throw a head (13 pounds)  sideways over 20 feet without even looking in that general direction, but these types of acts are just part of the illusion of strength made by this film. I will say that over the course of history that ancient people were stronger (minus nutrition details) due to the fact that many of them worked in trades demanding strength of body. These are also trades that we would not suffer as a people today.

I say this film is void of consequence and responsibility because it falls victim to the obvious pitfalls of a sequel. For instance...
The captain and his son is the same plot line from the first to second with different characters (that are underdeveloped).
The movie uses the legendary actions of the first to make a somewhat new plot line for the second (this is not always bad but for the most part it takes away from the present)
The main character is always far more intelligent than the audience or other characters in the film believe him to be. It's like opposite dramatic irony where the audience is left in the dark about the hero in order to make it more dramatic when he does something unpredictable. (Aka he does not appear to have any knowledge of naval warfare from the war fought 10 years previous, but is a great tactician later on.)
Character reuse is rampant and mundane. They try to use the same characters in the second that were good characters in the first except they have little development in the second.
They also have new characters to basically take the place of the old characters and never develop them except for a few lines of dialogue here and there. They want you to be emotionally invested in the character from the last movie except not he has a new face, less meaning, and you don't care if he lives or dies.
They are also unable to produce a new hero that is different from that of the first. He has all the screen time in the world, but hardly differed from Leonitus in any way. It makes for a boring version of the character Gerrard Butler made awesome.

The film does have some great one liners, but they are forced. I will say that the women characters do have great diction and delivery. I am one of those people who is saddened by the lack of strong female roles and in film and yes I do find it odd that you would find strong woman roles in a frat fest like this. Often I think these strong male oriented piss contests for movies are one of the only venues a woman can be strong in film today. I will not defend them by saying that even a small minority provide this venue. This is a recent trend in film. I can't say I feel the empowerment of women in them but I will write that I am hoping these types of women characters are used more often in film (not television) I am not saying these films are a template, but merely a stage to stand on.

The similarities between the two 300 films are enough to make them sequels but not enough to make this film independently great on its own.

It seems the director had freedom without consequence or responsibility for making a poorly written film.

Gravity (2013) This May Be The Worst Movie to Ever Win An Oscar

Gravity (2013) Warner

As the Oscars loom, I am trying to update myself with all the nominees which is why I decided to watch Gravity. It was directed by Alfonso Cuaron who subsequently directed the third Harry Potter film so I should’ve known this film was going to be a nightmare. His foreign films like “Y Tu Mama Tambien” was good, but it is also more than a decade old.  

It’s hard for me to describe in words how awful this film truly was from top to bottom. I think the only way to enhance its viewing experience is to do so smoking pot so that the cinematic visuals might actually equate to something existential rather than a waste of film. Some of the Earth shots were nice to look at, but the story is so bland and unappealing that I wanted to detach myself from the film so that I could float off into space in the opposite direction.

When Tina Fey made the joke that “George Clooney would rather float off into space and die rather than spend one more minute with a woman his own age” she wasn’t really joking. Not only is Clooney’s character forgettable, but there is no attachment whatsoever to both of the characters involved. From the beginning I wanted to pay more attention to my dog licking himself then I did caring about either character and the longer the film went on the more boring it became.

I don’t mind dramas, they are usually the best films, but to call this a drama is far from the definition of the word which is defined as “an exciting, emotional, or unexpected series of events or set of circumstances.” Not only was I not entertained by it, emotionally tied to it, I also thought the events were totally predictable. I called the accident before it happed (it was obvious), I called the part about her daughter (easy), I could see through her hallucinations in a heartbeat, and who thought she was going to die? These personal one character stories have been done before, but take into consideration that Cast Away (2000) was done with one character just like 127 Hours (2010) and both had characters you actually cared about.

The movie itself has some great visuals but the zero-gravity made me want to yack. It was the most convincing part of space besides Bullocks’ lack of knowledge about astrophysics. I am not sure how most reviewers considered this to be a masterpiece of film. This movie was not gripping, emotional, inspirational, interesting, or worth watching. Those are usually some of the themes tied to Oscar winning films.

I guess you could say that my opinion is tainted because of the fact that everyone is making a big deal out of this film, but it is not art. It is a worthless story about a woman trying to get home to nothing in particular. You don’t care about her or her journey and it feels like the entire movie is based around the zero-gravity concept they used in the cinematography. I can’t blame them for naming the movie “gravity” because that is all it was about.