‘Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’ was the biggest surprise of 2017

Posted on January 14, 2018

By MARK VIOLA

I will freely admit that it’s been quite a few years since I watched “Jumanji” — the 1995 comedy starring Robin Williams as a man trapped inside a magical board game — but I still look back on it with fond memories from my childhood. So, when I heard they were making a sequel 22 years later and that it would be starring Dwayne Johnson (“Fate of the Furious”) and Kevin Hart (“Central Intelligence”), I was in no way interested.

Nostalgia aside, the track record of “decades later” sequels, especial those of comedies, is pretty bad. You only have to look at “Zoolander 2” and “Dumb and Dumber To.”

To say I was surprised by “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” would be a vast understatement. Shocked might be better word, because this film is highly entertaining, producing plenty of laughs and delivering not only a fun experience, but a worthy and honorable sequel to the original film. It is not an exaggeration to say “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” was the biggest surprise of 2017 for me when it comes to movies.

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