Jumanji
Jumanji is a 1995 American fantasyadventure film directed by Joe Johnston. It is an adaptation of the 1981 children's book of the same name by Chris Van Allsburg. The film was written by Van Allsburg, Greg Taylor,Jonathan Hensleigh, and Jim Strain and starsRobin Williams, Bonnie Hunt, Kirsten Dunst,Bradley Pierce, David Alan Grier, Jonathan Hyde, and Bebe Neuwirth.
The story centers on 12-year-old Alan Parrish, who becomes trapped in a board game while playing with his best friend Sarah Whittle in 1969. Twenty-six years later, in 1995, siblings Judy and Peter Shepherd find the game, begin playing and then unwittingly release the now-adult Alan. After tracking down Sarah, the quartet resolve to finish the game in order to reverse all of the destruction it has caused.
The film was released on December 15, 1995. Despite its lukewarm critical reception, the film was a box office success, earning $263 million worldwide on a budget of approximately $65 million and it became the10th highest-grossing film of 1995.
A similar film, marketed as a spiritual successor to Jumanji, titled Zathura: A Space Adventure, was released in 2005 and was also adapted from a Van Allsburg book which was more directly connected to the Jumanji book.
It is part of the Jumanji franchise and spawned a direct sequel, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017).
Plot
In 1869, in Brantford, New Hampshire, two brothers, Caleb and Benjamin, bury a chest and hope that no one ever finds it.
A century later in 1969, 12-year-old Alan Parrish escapes a group of bullies led by Billy Jessup and retreats to his father Sam's shoe factory. He meets his friend, Carl Bentley, one of his father's employees, who reveals a new shoe prototype he made by himself. Alan misplaces the shoe and damages a machine, but Carl takes responsibility and gets fired. After being beaten up by Jessup's group, who also steal his bicycle, Alan follows the sound of tribal drumbeats to a construction site. He finds the chest containing a board gamecalled "Jumanji" and brings it home.
At home, after an argument with Sam about attending Cliffside, a boarding school for boys, Alan plans to run away. His best friend, Sarah Whittle, arrives to return his bicycle, and Alan shows her Jumanji and invites her to play. With each roll of the dice, the game piece moves by itself and a cryptic message describing the roll's outcome appears in thecrystal ball at the center of the board. Sarah reads the first message on the board and hears an eerie sound. Alan then unintentionally rolls the dice after being startled by the chiming clock; a message tells him to wait in a jungle until someone rolls a 5 or 8. Alan is sucked into the game, and a swarm of bats chases Sarah out of the mansion.
Twenty-six years later in 1995, after their parents died in an accident on a ski trip, siblings Judy and Peter Shepherd move into the vacant Parrish mansion with their aunt Nora. Soon after, Judy and Peter find Jumanji in the attic and begin playing it. Their rolls release a swarm of big mosquitoes and a troop of monkeys. The game rules state that everything will be restored when the game ends, so they continue playing. Peter's next roll releases a lion and an adult Alan. As Alan makes his way around town, he encounters Carl, who is now working as a police officer. Alan, Judy, and Peter go to the now-closed shoe factory, where a derelict tells Alan that after his disappearance, Sam abandoned his business and searched for Alan until his death just four years earlier.
Realizing they need Sarah to finish the game, the three locate her, now suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after Alan's disappearance, and they persuade her to join them. Sarah's roll releases fast-growingcarnivorous plants, and Alan's next roll releases a big-game hunter named Van Pelt. Judy's next roll releases a stampede of various animals, and a pelican steals the game. Peter retrieves it, but Alan is arrested by Carl. Later, Van Pelt catches up to Alan's friends and steals the game, hoping to use it to lure Alan to him. Sarah, Judy, and Peter follow Van Pelt to a department store, where they fight him and retrieve the game, and reunite with Alan, who has managed to hijack Carl's car. When the four return to the mansion, it is now completely overrun by jungle wildlife. They release and dodge numerous calamities, until Van Pelt arrives and confronts Alan. When Alan drops the dice, he wins the game which causes everything that happened as a result of the game to be reversed before Van Pelt can shoot him.
Alan and Sarah find themselves back in 1969 as children, but have full memories of everything that happened. Alan reconciles with his father and admits that he was responsible for the shoe that damaged the factory's machine. Carl is rehired, and Sam tells his son that he does not have to attend boarding school. Alan and Sarah throw Jumanji into a river, weighed down with bricks, and then share a kiss.
In the present, Alan and Sarah are married and expecting their first child. Alan runs the factory after Sam has retired (but is still alive). He and Sarah reunite with Judy and Peter (who have no memories of the game), and meet their parents Jim and Martha during a Christmas party. The Parrishes offer Jim a job and convince the Shepherds to cancel their upcoming ski trip, averting their deaths.
On a beach in France, two young girls hear drumbeats while walking, as Jumanji lies partially buried in the sand.
Cast
- Robin Williams as Alan Parrish, a man trapped in Jumanji for 26 years
- Adam Hann-Byrd as Young Alan
- Bonnie Hunt as Sarah Whittle, Alan's friend who is traumatized by Jumanji and devastated by Alan's disappearance
- Laura Bell Bundy as Young Sarah
- Kirsten Dunst as Judy Shepherd, Peter's older sister
- Bradley Pierce as Peter Shepherd, Judy's younger brother
- David Alan Grier as Carl Bentley, an employee at Sam's shoe factory and Alan's oldest friend, who later becomes a police officer
- Jonathan Hyde as Van Pelt, a big-game hunter from the game who tries to hunt Alan
- Hyde also portrays Samuel "Sam" Parrish, Alan's father
- Bebe Neuwirth as Nora Shepherd, Judy and Peter's aunt
- Patricia Clarkson as Carol-Anne Parrish, Alan's mother
- Malcolm Stewart as Jim Shephard, Judy and Peter's father
- Annabel Kershaw as Martha Shepherd, Judy and Peter's mother
- Gary Joseph Thorup as Billy Jessup, the leader of the bullies that picks on Alan for being friends with Sarah.
- Frank Welker provides the special vocal effects.
Production
While Peter Guber was visiting Boston, he invited author Chris Van Allsburg, who lives inProvidence, Rhode Island, to option his book. Van Allsburg wrote one of the screenplay's drafts, which he described as "sort of trying to imbue the story with a quality of mystery and surrealism".[2]
Tristar Pictures agreed to finance the film on the condition that Robin Williams play the starring role. However, Williams turned down the role based on the first script he was given. Only after director Joe Johnston and screenwriters Jonathan Hensleigh, Greg Taylor and Jim Strain undertook extensive rewrites did Williams accept.[3] Johnston had reservations over casting Williams because of the actors' reputation for improvisation, fearing that he wouldn't adhere to the script. However, Williams understood that it was "a tightly structured story" and filmed the scenes as outlined in the script, often filming duplicate scenes afterwards where he was allowed to improvise with Bonnie Hunt.[4]
Shooting took place in various New England locales, mainly Keene, New Hampshire, which represented the story's fictional town of Brantford, New Hampshire, and North Berwick, Maine, where the Olde Woolen Millstood in for the Parrish Shoe Factory.[5][6]Additional filming took place in Vancouver,British Columbia, where a mock-up of the Parrish house was built.[7]
Special effects were a combination of more traditional techniques like puppetry andanimatronics (provided by Amalgamated Dynamics) with state-of-the-art digital effects overseen by Industrial Light & Magic.[8][9] ILM developed two new software programs specially for Jumanji, one called iSculpt, which allowed the illustrators to create realistic facial expressions on the computer-generated animals in the film, and another which for the first time created realistic digital hair, used on the monkeys and the lion.[10] Actor Bradley Pierce (Peter) underwent three and a half hours of prosthetic makeup application daily for a period of two and a half months to film the scenes where he transformed into a monkey.[11]
The film was dedicated to visual effects supervisor Stephen L. Price, who died before the film's release.[12]
Release
Jumanji was released in theatres on December 15, 1995.
Home media
Jumanji was first released on VHS in 1996; it was re-released as a Collector's Series DVD in 2000, followed by a Blu-ray in 2017.
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