Jumanji

This article is about the film. For the book, see Jumanji (short story). For the TV show, see Jumanji (TV series).

Jumanji
North American release poster
Directed by	Joe Johnston
Produced by	Robert W. Cort Ted Field Larry J. Franco Frank Marshall Kathleen Kennedy
Screenplay by	Greg Taylor Jonathan Hensleigh Jim Strain
Based on	Jumanji  by Chris Van Allsburg
Starring	Robin Williams Kirsten Dunst David Alan Grier Bonnie Hunt Jonathan Hyde Bebe Neuwirth
Music by	James Horner
Cinematography	Thomas Ackerman
Editing by	Robert Dalva
Studio	Interscope Communications Teitler Film
Distributed by	TriStar Pictures
Release date(s)	December 15, 1995 (1995-12-15)
Running time	104 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$65 million
Box office	$262,797,249

Jumanji is a 1995 American fantasy adventure film about a supernatural board game that makes wild animals and other jungle hazards materialize upon each player's move. It was directed by Joe Johnston and is based on Chris Van Allsburg's popular 1981 picture book of the same name. The special effects were provided by Industrial Light & Magic in computer graphics, and Amalgamated Dynamics with animatronics.

The film stars Robin Williams as Alan, a man who emerges from the game's unseen jungle world, along with Kirsten Dunst as a girl named Judy Shepherd who plays the game with her brother, Peter Shepherd (Bradley Pierce), David Alan Grier as a hapless shoemaker-turned-police officer, Adam Hann-Byrd as Alan when he was a boy, Bonnie Hunt as the woman who played the game with Alan when they were children, and Jonathan Hyde in a dual role as both Alan's father and Van Pelt, a big-game hunter intent on killing Alan—Van Pelt is patterned after Alan's father. The cast also features Bebe Neuwirth as Judy and Peter's aunt. It was shot in Keene, New Hampshire, where the story is set, North Berwick, Maine (the Parrish Shoes factory) and Vancouver, British Columbia. In 2005, a spiritual sequel to Jumanji, Zathura, was released.

Plot

In 1869, two boys bury a chest in a forest near Keene, New Hampshire. When one of the boys, Benjamin, asks what will happen if somebody finds it and digs it up again, the other boy, Caleb, replies," May God have mercy on his soul", before departing in their carriage.

100 years later, in 1969, 12-year-old Alan Parrish flees from a gang of bullies led by Billy Jessop, boyfriend of his friend Sarah Whittle, who Alan has a crush on, to a shoe factory owned by his father, Sam, where he meets his friend Carl Bentley, one of Sam's employees. When Alan accidentally damages a machine with a prototype sneaker Carl hopes to present, Carl takes the blame and loses his job. Outside the factory after the bullies beat Alan up and steal his bicycle, Alan follows the sound of tribal drumbeats to a construction site and finds the chest, containing a board game called Jumanji.

Alan takes the game home and attempts to run away after having an argument with his father about attending a boarding school. However, Sarah gives his bike back and apologizes to him. The two begin playing Jumanji, which acts strangely: When a player rolls the dice, the player's piece moves automatically and a message appears on the board. When Alan makes his first move, he is sucked into the game. Though the message reads that he will be freed when a five or an eight is rolled, Sarah runs away after being attacked by bats.

26 years later, in 1995, Judy and Peter Shepherd move into the vacant Parrish house with their aunt Nora after both their parents died in a skiing accident a year earlier. While exploring the house, Judy and Peter hear Jumanji's drumbeats and find the game in the attic. They start to play and Judy rolls the first move, causing giant mosquitoes to attack them, and reddish-orange monkeys destroy their kitchen. Realizing that everything will be restored when the game ends, they continue the game despite the danger. Peter rolls a five, releasing both a lion and Alan, who is now an adult. Alan locks the lion in a bedroom, then goes to the now abandoned shoe factory. On the way, he meets Carl, now working as a police officer, and discovers that the town's economy was devastated by the factory's closure. In the factory, a homeless man reveals that Sam abandoned the business to search for his son until his death in 1991. After Sam's death, his wife Carol-Anne continued the search until her own death as well. Alan then goes back to the Parrish house, shaves himself and gets dressed.

Alan joins the game with Judy and Peter, but when rolling the dice has no effect on the board, Alan realizes they are continuing the same game that he and Sarah began playing 26 years earlier. Finding Sarah, now a psychic who had gone insane after Alan's disappearance, Alan tricks her into rejoining the game and the following moves release fast-growing vines and a giant deadly man-eating "pod". After dealing with the pod and vines, Alan rolls and a big-game hunter named Van Pelt who is intent on killing Alan emerges as he is a product of the game itself.

On Judy's next turn, a stampede (rhinoceros, African elephants, zebras and pelican) wrecks the house. Among other things, Peter gradually transforms into a half-monkey after trying to cheat; Peter, Sarah and Judy battle Van Pelt in a local department store, who bought a new sniper rifle; a monsoon floods the house; a crocodile attacks the group; Alan is sucked into the floor by quicksand; large poisonous spiders come out and Judy is shot by a poisonous barb from a flower; and an earthquake breaks the house in half. Finally, Alan wins the game just in time when Van Pelt is about to shoot him, causing all jungle elements (including Van Pelt) to be sucked back into the board in a form of a whirlwind.

After that, Alan and Sarah suddenly find themselves back in 1969 again, once again children, but with full knowledge of their lives after they started playing. Alan reconciles with his father and admits that he was the one who damaged the machine. Carl gets his job back, and Sam allows his son to attend a local school if he wishes to do so. Alan becomes terrified, thinking that Judy and Peter are still in the attic, but Sarah reminds him that it's still 1969, before Judy and Peter are even born. Sarah hands their game tokens to Alan as a way of showing that they were never in the game. Alan and Sarah chain up the Jumanji board and throw it into a river. Judy and Peter's parents are also once again alive.

Later in 1995 once again, Alan and Sarah are married and expecting their first child. Alan has taken over the shoe business, Carl still works in the factory as a plant supervisor, and Sam is retired but still alive. Judy, Peter, and their parents meet with Alan and Sarah at a Christmas party, where Alan and Sarah offer the children's father a job in the shoe company. When the parents tell them that they are going to spend the holidays on an ill-fated skiing trip, Alan and Sarah immediately discourage them and offer to spend the holidays with them.

Meanwhile, two French-speaking young girls hear drumbeats as they walk along a beach, where the Jumanji board is seen half-buried in the sand.

Cast

• Robin Williams as Alan Parrish: A man trapped in Jumanji for twenty-six years.
  • Adam Hann-Byrd as Young Alan Parrish
• Kirsten Dunst as Judy Shepherd: Peter's sister
• David Alan Grier as Carl Bentley: An employee at Sam's shoe factory who later becomes a police officer
• Bonnie Hunt as Sarah Whittle: A psychic driven into madness after Alan's disappearance.
  • Laura Bell Bundy as Young Sarah Whittle
• Bradley Pierce as Peter Shepard, Judy's brother
• Jonathan Hyde as Sam Parrish: Alan's father.
  • Hyde also portrayed Van Pelt, the main antagonist and a big-game hunter from the game.
• Bebe Neuwirth as Nora Shepherd: Judy and Peter's aunt
• Malcolm Stewart as Jim Shepherd, Judy and Peter's father
• Annabel Kershaw as Martha Shepherd, Judy and Peter's mother
• Patricia Clarkson as Carol-Anne Parrish, Alan's mother
• Gillian Barber as Mrs. Thomas, the realtor
• Gary Joseph Thorup as Billy Jessop, the leader of a group of bullies that picks on Alan and is protective over Sarah.
• Frank Welker as Special Vocal Effects
• James Handy as Exterminator
• Brandon Obray as Benjamin
• Cyrus Thiedeke as Caleb
• Leonard Zola as Cop
• Lloyd Berry as Bum
• Darryl Henriques as Gun Salesman
• Robyn Driscoll as Paramedic
• Peter Bryant as Paramedic
• Sarah Gilson as Girl
• Florica Vlad as Girl
• June Lion as Baker
• Brenda Lockmuller as Pianist
• Frederick Richardson as Barber
• Jaysen Clough as Looter (uncredited)
• Daniel Olsen as Ice Cream Man (uncredited)
• David Szehi as Townie (uncredited)
• Tom Woodruff Jr. as Lion / Crocodile (uncredited)

Filming

As Peter Guber was visiting Boston, he took advantage of being in New England to invite author Chris Van Allsburg, who lives in Providence, Rhode Island, to option his book. The author even wrote one of the screenplay's draft, which he described as "sort of trying to imbue the story with a quality of mystery and surrealism".

The supermarket scene was shot in March 1995

Soundtrack

Jumanji: Complete Motion Picture Score
Film score (Digital download)/Audio CD by James Horner
Released	November 21, 1995
Length	51:04
Label	Epic Soundtrax

All music composed by James Horner.

Track listing
No.	Title	Length
1.	"Prologue And Main TItle"	3:42
2.	"First Move"	2:20
3.	"Monkey Mayhem"	4:42
4.	"A New World"	2:40
5.	""It's Sarah's Move""	2:36
6.	"The Hunter"	1:56
7.	"Rampage Through Town"	2:28
8.	"Alan Parrish"	4:18
9.	"Stampede!"	2:12
10.	"A Pelican Steals The Game"	1:40
11.	"The Monsoon"	4:48
12.	""Jumanji""	11:47
13.	"End Titles"	5:55
Total length:		51:04

Commercial songs from film, but not on soundtrack

• "Una Voce Poco Fa"
  • Written by Gioacchino Rossini
  • Performed by Agnes Baltsas and the Vienna Symphony
  • Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Ian Marin

• "Night & Day"
  • Written by Cole Porter

• "Serenade in D, Op. 44"
  • Composed by Antonin Dvořák
  • Performed by Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields
  • Conducted by Neville Marriner

• "Locomotive Breath"
  • Written by Ian Anderson
  • Performed by Jethro Tull

• "The Ballad of Gilligan's Isle" (Theme from Gilligan's Island)
  • Written by Sherwood Schwartz & George Wyle

Reception

Jumanji did well at the box office, taking $100,475,249 in the United States and Canada and a further $162,322,000 overseas, totaling $262,797,249.

The film earned mixed reviews from critics, with review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reporting that 50% of 32 critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 5.6 out of 10. Metacritic posts an average rating of 39%, based on 18 reviews. Van Allensburg approved the movie despite the changes and not being as "idiosyncratic and the peculiar" as the novel, declaring that "The film is faithful in reproducing the chaos level that comes with having a jungle animal in the house. It's a good movie."

Reboot

In July 2012, rumors emerged about a reboot of the film already being in development. Columbia Pictures president Doug Belgrad had a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, saying: “We’re going to try and reimagine Jumanji and update it for the present.”. On August 1, 2012, it was confirmed that Matthew Tolmach will be producing the reboot alongside William Teitler, who produced the original film.

External links

• Jumanji at the Internet Movie Database
• Jumanji at Box Office Mojo
• Jumanji at Rotten Tomatoes