“Smolder.”

From Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.

After a normal (but bad) day, four random high school students are given the task of cleaning out a school storage room for detention.  There is the nerdy germaphobe Spencer (Alex Wolff), football star Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain), popular selfie queen Bethany (Madison Iseman), and the quiet and reserved Martha (Morgan Jeanette Turner); the kids have nothing in common, but decide to play an old video game they found in a corner.  Once they’ve all selected their avatars, they press start and are sucked into the bodies of the avatars in the middle of a jungle.  Spencer is transformed into the super strong Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), Fridge into the weak Moose Finbar (Kevin Hart), Bethany into the old and overweight Professor Oberon (Jack Black), and Martha into the butt-kicking Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan).  They soon discover the only way to get out of the game, is to play through the game and find a magical crystal that keeps Jumanji in balance.  When the jungle isn’t trying to kill the teens, main bad guy Van Pelt (Bobby Cannavale) sends his henchmen fill in.  Fighting through the jungle, meeting friends (such as Nick Jonas), and facing dangerous challenges forces the teens to rely on each other in ways they never could have imagined.

This long-awaited sequel opens where the 1995 movie ended, but the revitalization of the Jumanji game as a video game instead of a board game is fun and well-done.  The teen actors are solid in their more minor roles, but the actors in the avatar roles are brilliant; each one of the four are strong in their character and together create a powerful, balanced cast.  The action is steady throughout and there is a healthy dose of humor mixed in, from Gillan and Johnson, as well as the comedians on the cast.  There are some innuendos that’ll be too mature for young viewers and the video game-style action could be scary as well, but overall Jumanji lives up to the fun adventure of the original.

| Rated: PG-13 | Running Time: 119 minutes |Genre: action/comedy/fantasy |

||Family Viewing||Cursing: 5 of 10|Nudity: 0 of 10|Sexuality: 3 of 10|Gore: 4 of 10

|AVAILABLE FOR HOME VIEWING|