CINEMA: TOY SCARY

THIS IS THE WAY HOLLYWOOD wants it: before long, all movies will be made by guys sitting at computers or playing with giant mechanical toys. The lions and raptors and aliens will go Boo! as they are programmed to do, and audiences will go Eek! as they are programmed to do. Occasionally, the films will require actors, listed in the credits as “Special Human Effects,” but they won’t need viewers with minds of their own. These movies will be ideal for the cybergeneration: machines playing to machines.

If Jumanji finds an audience, our point will be proved. Director Joe Johnston’s elaborately dressed kids’ movie–about a board game that sucks its players into a perilous jungle overrun by lions, rhinos, monkeys, crocodiles and spiders–spends so much time on the how of special effects that it neglects the why of characterization. Jumanji wastes the gifts of two terrific comic actors, Robin Williams and David Alan Grier, and some other good people (Kirsten Dunst, Bonnie Hunt). Like the viewer, everyone on-screen pretty much sits back, gets strapped in and takes a bumpy techno-thrill ride through a haunted house.

Jumanji’s plot (from Chris Van Allsburg’s book and a script by Jonathan Hensleigh, Greg Taylor and Jim Strain) is the 486th rewrite of a Spielbergian fantasy: lost child meets the Dead Parents Society. The story doesn’t advance; it just piles up, like a multiple-car wreck. And its whimsy is spiked with way too much spite. In this nightmare replay of Toy Story, everything is demolished: a pretty old home, a local mall, an innocent town. It’s destruct-o-rama, kids! Fun for the whole dysfunctional family! Because it exploits children’s weakness for noise, clutter and anarchy, Jumanji is a perfect Christmas gift–for Bob Dole. Let’s see if the Movie Morals Monitor goes after a PG film that really deserves a righteous swat.