Crying while watching Jumanji

By the times the credits are rolling, so are the tears. I am thirty-nine years old, and I had never cried to this movie before. It is a kids’ movie, being that is good for the whole family but the themes it touched upon and my more ‘mature’ aesthetic got me in the feels, surprisingly.

The movie we are talking about? Of course, Jumanji. No, not the one with Jack Black. The 1995 version with none other than Robin Williams.

There is something about this movie, watching it many years later, that has a pull that few movies these days ever did. One of the things that watching it now made me appreciate it was its ability to not over explain.

We start the movie in what seems like the 1800s, some kids are digging a hole and putting a box in the whole that is making, not to stereotype, this jungle drum beat. The kids bury it and then it fast-forwards to the year 1969 (or some date similar) to a New England-like place (I am going by memory here and can’t take the time to look it up at the moment).

There is no witch doctor, no family curse; it just is. As the audience, we see Alan, a short kid who is picked on by the town bullies because of his family name. Now, this is something I can see being an issue these days. The kid lives in a mansion. Literally. From the looks of it, he is an only child and lives in something that is akin to living in the White House (or makes the McAllister family in ‘Home Alone’ envious). Of course, the house being so big does help with making the events that do happen later in the movie keep stable (because a stampede rushing through a two-bedroom apartment on the seventh floor of an apartment complex probably would leave a whole lot of mess on the pavement, as well as a visit from PETA).

However, despite the financial well being of his family (they made their fortune making shoes), Alan is also friends with Carl(played by David Allan Grier), one of his father’s employees. Carl tries to introduce Alan to a new line of shoes (think pre-Reebok basketball sneakers), but Alan is so into his own well-being, when he forgets to pick up the sneaker from the line and it damages a piece of machinery, Alan walks away, leaving Carl to take the blame and eventually get fired (in that timeline, which we’ll get to in a moment).

Before the machinery incident, Alan talks to his dad, trying to get a ride with him home so he doesn’t get beat up by the bullies. His father, speaking to him ‘mano-i-mano’ tells him to face his fears because well, his father has other things to do. The separation between the two is tangible as Alan feels like he has to face a lot of what he goes through life, alone. The mother is visible, but absent as the other half of parenting and that brings me to another point.

Now, I understand that the movie is suppose to bring about an allegory between Alan and his father(who is played by Jonathan Hyde who also plays two ‘father’ roles in the film), Alan and Peter (the boy who moves in with his sister and Aunt later in the timeline), but the women in this film are absent.

Sarah Whittle, who is played by Bonnie Hunt later in the film, is the girl who Alan likes but hasn’t come up and tell her. After a fight with his father about going to a private school that he doesn’t want to go to, Alan prepares to leave the house to runaway. His parents have to go to some grand party meeting. In the car, Alan’s mother is trying to tell Alan’s father something but when confronted angrily, she just stays silent.

The women in this movie do not exhibit any power whatsoever and it is disheartening to see. Even when at the end of the movie and things go back the way they were (this board game is WAY too powerful), the mother is still absent and I feel it takes away from the importance of parenting where there is a time to be harsh, but also a time to be soft. Yes, Alan does realize he is taking after his father’s ‘cold’ ways when Sarah and his sister, Judy, praise Peter when he grabs the game from a raging river, or after a battle within a department store with the Hunter that comes out of the game, Alan sees that after twenty-plus years in the game, he takes after his father and only when he is a ‘father-figure’ himself, does he realize what is going on.

However, Sarah, Judy, the kids’ Aunt; they have things happen to them where they are in turn, powerless. Sarah could have kept playing till she rolled a five or eight, but she was so scared she never returned to get Alan out of the game (this is after they began playing in the 1960s). Judy is a great liar, where her skill to create fabrications only comes in when talking to the police (make those connections as you will). Then that is the only time she actually is active within the whole movie.

Peter, the supposed quiet one, not only talks Alan into playing the game with “reverse psychology” that HIS FATHER taught him (cause the kids’ parents are dead in the past timeline, you see), but is also the one who catches the board game, who creates an elaborate Home-Alone-esque trap in the department store while turning into a monkey-human hybrid, and is the one who gets the ax from the shed.

The movie so heavily leans on the men doing all the work and yet, the women are the “outliers”, the collateral damage. Even when an indoor monsoon from the game floods the house and a crocodile tries to eat Sarah and the kids, Alan is the one to save them all.

Now I get it, Robin Williams was the star and he does a FANTASTIC job in the role he is given. However, the character Alan is not remarkable. He doesn’t have a specific skill or interest that makes him stand out. The world, in Jumanji, revolves around Alan and so do the women.

Imagine, instead, that Judy was the one that created the amazing Rube-Goldberg-Canoe-Rocket? Or instead of Alan saving everyone from the crocodile, Judy saves everyone and shows up as an equal to Alan, facing her fear and showcasing how much she cared and loves Alan? There would be, at least in my perspective, balance. Just like in the board game and everyone is equal in the eyes of the game, so should everyone else be able to outside the game.

Even with that glaring bit, the movie itself is just full of whimsey. Playing a game that when you play, the animals start coming out? This is around the time I started receiving Zoobooks through the mail and let me tell you: before the internet, those books were SO GOOD. Looking through each page, seeing the details of animals of all shapes and sizes. Watching Jumanji brought me back to such an era where what came out of the game was not fiction, but an animal I could see in real life (besides those man-eating vines. The spiders were probably from Australia, I reckon).

The transformation of the mansion from this extravagant, posh area, to an abandoned home, to a living rainforest lives rent-free in my mind. Would it be difficult to move any type of furniture around in that house? Absolutely. Does it look better as a rainforest than later on when they attempt to recapture the Christmas feelings of the McAllistors? You bethca. (I have been dunking on Home Alone but it is just something about movie homes’ during those times that have a similar vibe).

The use of both traditional animatronics for close-ups and stills, alongside the use of Computer Generated Graphics is astounding, because, at the time, recreating a real-animal and make it life-like was just out of this world! I mean, yeah, the monkeys still look bad (it is that uncanny valley with the faces), but the rest of the animals? Stellar work to those who worked on the film both in programming and in practical effects.

And though I do see the movie is plagued by being filmed around Alan’s life, I must commend it on taking itself seriously. There is a part after Alan and the kids meet up with Sarah and she is still trying to believe that the little boy from the 60s is alive and also, the game is magic, she tells them she is scared and what if she gets sucked up into the game. Alan reassures her that he won’t stop playing, and in doing so, both Judy and Peter say the same thing, propping their hands in the center of the table.

In this day and age, that kind of scene would seem out of place. It feels too grounded in reality. The movie takes a moment to reflect on Sarah’s fear and confusion, but also showcasing the bravery, resiliency, and promise from the group that they will not stop until the game is finished. No wink and nod to the audience, just pure story.

Ultimately, I think this is one of the reasons why, even with my gripes with the female characters, the film holds up so well. It is not looking to make a franchise (though if there was a Jumanji in different parts of the world, that would be SO AWESOME! Alas, it was not to be…yet), it was not looking to sap more money with tie-ins (yes, there was that interesting cartoon and board game but that’s later). A film that wanted to showcase the importance of parenting, being a kid, and facing your fears.

Oh, and to always finish what you start. Hence why I am typing all of this down at once and not taking any breaks because if I did, it’d be twenty-nine years later until I come back to this.