Jumanji: Open World Moves to Christmas Day, and This Time the Game Comes to Us

Photo: Maciej Kraus, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sony has quietly shifted Jumanji: Open World from December 11 to Christmas Day, which puts it a week after the Avengers and Dune pile-up and right in the family slot that the last two films did so well in. Jake Kasdan is back directing, and the whole gang returns: Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Karen Gillan, with Danny DeVito, Nick Jonas, Awkwafina and Rhys Darby around them. It is being sold as the last one, and for once I believe it.

The hook this time is the reverse of the first two. Instead of the kids being sucked into the game, the game breaks out of the console and into the real world, and the four avatars turn up as themselves, walking around like stiff video game characters who do not quite understand how doors work. The trailer leans hard on Johnson doing a demo-mode version of his own character and it is genuinely funny, which is more than I expected from a third go at this idea.

Photo: Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What made Welcome to the Jungle work was the body-swap joke, the big movie stars playing teenagers trapped in the wrong shape. Open World seems to have found a new version of that joke rather than repeating it, and that is the difference between a sequel that earns its ticket and one that coasts. The script is from Kasdan, Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg again.

Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Christmas Day is a crowded release date and this one will be fighting Artificial for adults and whatever is left of Avengers for everybody else. I still think it finds its audience. The first two made a lot of money with less competition, and the trailer is doing the job. Are you planning to take the family, or is three Jumanjis enough?