Why So Blu?

Jumanji (4k UHD Blu-ray review)

Jumanji involves two orphaned children (of course they’re orphans) who move into a long forgotten and abandoned house. They find a board game that unleashes a large variety of wild hairy beasts including Robin Williams. It so happens that Alan parrish (Williams) has been living in ht board game for nearly 30 years waiting for someone to release him. Thats about as deep as the film gets as its mainly a loose skeleton to have endless dull unimaginative action sequences that have no real bearing on the development of characters or plot.

 

Film

Between the horribly rendered monkeys, elephants, plants, and insects there are few wooden human character who make an appearance. Aunt Norah (Bebe Neuwirth) the new guardian to her orphaned niece and nephew, Carl (David Allen Grier) a cop who has a connection to Parrish, VanPelt (Jonathan Hyde) a hunter who has been released from the game looking to murder Parrish inexplicably. The fact that we hardly know anything about any of these characters or their history writes off any tension that could have been in this story. Lastly there is Sarah (Bonnie Hunt) who is with the young Parrish when he was gobbled up by the game. As a result she has spent thousands of dollars on therapy and has been labeled as crazy by the community. It sounds like a cast of truly exciting character that young people would be able to relate to. Im sure kids on the playground are dying to play the heavily medicated Jumaji character.

It’s not enough that the film is surprisingly uninspired; it’s also horribly mean spirited. Jumanji seems to have contempt for its characters. putting them through grizzly trials including one of the children becoming a grotesque ape creature and several instances where the characters face near death experiences.

Jumanji lacks both creativity and humor. It is an adventure comedy without adventure or comedy. Robin Williams is the only light in this film, his performance takes a below average script and does the absolute most he can with it, reminding us just how truly amazing he was. The film lacks any other character for him to bounce his wit and charm off of. Supporting actor seem lost, useless almost, due to a script that gives them nothing to do.

Each scene is formulaic following the same template; watching the game be played, reading some variation of a warning to run, not running, and repeating, over and over. It’s uninteresting and as interesting as each obstacle the characters encounter is, it is not enough to keep you engaged in the film.

Video 

Encoding: HEVC / H.265

Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)

Aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Clarity/Detail: Jumanji has a beautiful upgrade in its 4K Ultra-HD Blu-ray debut. The film shows quality with a crisp and clear picture. The image is vivid and textures are detailed. As we journey through the jungle everything looks great, but the effects certainly look dated.

Black Levels: Blacks are deep. No crushing witnessed on this render.

Color Reproduction:  The movie’s colors can be a bit dull and dreary by design; lots of grays and beiges and various shades thereof occasionally seem the more dominant end of the spectrum, but the image can certainly shine as the palette allows. A blue police car, a yellow and red flower monster, and other examples throughout the film offer a nice bit of reprieve from the somewhat bland and drab color scheme and tend to really show off what HDR can do, adding a nice bit of pizzaz and punch but remaining essentially faithful and simply finding a more deeply saturated and finely nuanced appearance.

Flesh Tones: Skin looks natural with a good amount of detail and texture, faces are clear and easy to distinguish.

Noise/Artifacts: Clean

Audio 

Audio Format: English: Dolby Atmos, English: Dolby TrueHD 7.1, French: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, German: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, Japanese: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, Czech: Dolby Digital 5.1, Hungarian: Dolby Digital 5.1, Italian: Dolby Digital 5.1, Polish: Dolby Digital 5.1, Portuguese: Dolby Digital 5.1, Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1, French (Canada): Dolby Digital 2.0, Thai: Dolby Digital 2.0

Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Swedish, Thai, Turkish

Dynamics: Sony’s Dolby Atmos soundtrack replaces the various, previous Blu-ray releases’ DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtracks, and the results are excellent and certainly helpful towards the film.

Height: Dolby Atmos was a good choice for this film as the sound is one of its few redeeming qualities here in the height channels.

Low-Frequency Extension: Heavy caliber gunshots bellow through the subwoofer. Deep tones blast with impressive, immediate punch and impressive full stage diffusion. The stampede through the house truly powers through the speakers with striking low end weight and authoritative movement.

Surround Sound Presentation:  Crawling vines and stampeding rhinos whiz by you and through each speaker of the surround sound.

Dialogue Reproduction: Everyone can be clearly heard with precise and well balanced vocals.

Extras 

Jumanji‘s UHD disc sets contains the feature film in 4K on the UHD disc, the 1080p version on Blu-ray and a UV digital copy code is included with purchase as well as the following extras:

• Audio Commentary: Special Effects Crew (from 2011 and 2015 releases)

• Sneak Peek of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (HD, 3:13): This is a preview for the new movie.

• Gag Reel (HD, 5:19)

• Deleted Scenes (HD): The Company with Soul (0:38) and Merry Christmas (1:09)

• Making Jumanji: The Realm of Imagination: (from 2011 and 2015 releases)

• Jumanji Motion Storybook as Read by Author Chris Van Allsburg: (from the 2015 release)

• SFX Featurette: Lions and Monkeys and Pods…Oh My!: (from the 2011 and 2015 releases)

• Bringing Down the House: (from the 2011 and 2015 releases)

• Jumanji: The Animated Series: (from the 2015 release)

• Storyboard Comparisons: (from the 2011 and 2015 releases)

• Production Stills (HD): Here we have a collection of still images from the making of the film: Set Photography, Production Design Photos, CTC: 1 Alligator, CTC: 2 Bats, CTC: 3 Monkeys, CTC: 4 Pelican, CTC: 5 Spiders, CTC: 6 Pod and CTC: 7 Lions.

• Conceptual Art (HD): This collection of stills includes Alternate Title Treatments, Creatures and Production Design.

• The Extreme Book of Nature (HD, 5:48): A collection of very brief featurettes about the creature sin the film such as Bats, Crocodiles, Lions, Monkeys, Mosquitoes, Spiders and Stampede.

• Ancient Diversions (SD, 14:21): Instructions on performing parlor tricks such as Disappearing Paper, Invisible Ink, Life After Death, Magic String, Severed Finger and Mind Reading.

• Trailers:  International Trailer: (from the 2015 release), “Are You Game” Trailer: (from the 2015 release), “It’s a Jungle In There” Trailer: (from the 2015 release)

Summary 

Jumanji is a boring film with what should have been an exciting adventure of a story. The characters, settings, and even colors in this film are dull and lifeless, except Robin Williams of course. The film gets by sheerly form nostalgia, the people who claim to like is simply do because of the memories attached to it. I would not recommend this film, your time would be better spent seeing the 2017 reboot.

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