Jack Black

The Adequate Mario Bros. Movie

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Super Mario Bros. Movie
  • IMDb: link

The 8-bit plumber who launched a franchise gets his own big budget animated movie in Illumination’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie. You can tell Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic, the team that gave us the more successful Teen Titans GO! To the Movies, have genuine affection for the Super Mario franchise and the script finds some clever ways to work various gameplay elements into the story. It’s the story, however, that falls a bit short. Even at only 92 minutes, the film runs out of gas, noticeably dragging in spots. You could easily trim 20 minutes off its runtime.

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Jumanji: The Next Level

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Jumanji: The Next Level
  • IMDb: link

Jumanji: The Next Level Blu-ray reviewJumanji: The Next Level brings back the cast of 2017’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle for another trip into the video game version of Jumanji as Spencer’s (Alex Wolff) friends follow when the isolated college Freshman goes looking for something familiar. This time around, however, the players are all in different avatars and two of the players have been replaced by Spencer’s grandfather (Danny DeVito) and his former business partner (Danny Glover).

I wasn’t all that impressed with the 2017 film which was fun at times but also lazy and largely forgettable, and The Next Level offers more of the same: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson smoldering, characters hashing out their issues while running for their lives, and Karen Gillan running around the jungle in short-shorts. The addition of the older players does offer some new dynamics (along with quite a few easy old people don’t understand technology jokes), and having none of the players in the avatars they expected is one of the sequel’s best choices.

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Jumanji: Unwelcome is the Remake

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
  • IMDb: link

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle movie review1995’s Jumanji isn’t a great adaptation of the award-winning children’s book about a game which brings jungle chaos to the real world, but it works well-enough as a family-friendly adventure. Fast-forward to 2017 and Jumanji is reinvented as a video game, a concept which gives the sequel/remake the ability to cast big name stars playing kids trapped in the game. While the concept is initially interesting, nothing about the plot makes sense in the structure of a video game as the script quickly devolves into a hot mess.

The film begins in Breakfast Club-style when four students, a nerd (Alex Wolff), jock (Ser’Darius Blain), popular girl (Madison Iseman), and freak (Morgan Turner), get thrown in detention by a stern principal. Finding an old video game in the school’s basement, the foursome are transported into the world of Jumanji as the avatars they chose: the hero (Dwayne “It’s Okay to Call Me The Rock Again” Johnson), his zoologist sidekick (Kevin Hart), a cartographer (Jack Black, basically doing Rob Schneider‘s shtick from The Hot Chick), and a dance-fighter (Karen Gillan). As in the original, the group will discover another player (Nick Jonas) trapped in the game.

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Kung Fu Panda 3

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Kung Fu Panda 3
  • IMDb: link

Kung Fu Panda 3Building on the epilogue of Kung Fu Panda 2, the latest sequel introduces Po (Jack Black) to his father Li (Bryan Cranston) and an entire tribe of Pandas hidden away in a secret valley deep in the mountains. Along the way Po will also struggle with passing on his knowledge of Kung Fu in the role of teacher, first to the Furious Five and later to his Panda students, when an old threat returns and begins stealing the chi of Kung Fu masters across China.

While not as good as the first film, Kung Fu Panda 3 stands up pretty well against Kung Fu Panda 2 – even if it ignores the most intriguing subplot of the first sequel involving Po’s evolving relationship with Tigress (Angelina Jolie). J.K. Simmons proves to be a good choice for the film’s villain Kai: Oogway‘s (Randall Duk Kim) one-time friend who escapes the spirit realm in his search of ultimate power.

And the film introduces us to an entire village of thinly drawn but (mostly) entertaining Panda characters while still finding time to deal with Mr. Ping‘s (James Hong) jealousy and insecurity at Po exploring a relationship with his “real” father.

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