Metacritic reviews

It’s an entertaining, engaging, colourful picture in its own right with decently-handled action-adventure set-pieces and sly comedy, detouring from the expected thrills and spills into body-hopping comedy drama.

Jumanji: Welcome to The Jungle is the Christmas tentpole release that aims to please and succeeds, a funny family entertainment product that subverts more expectations than it was obligated to contractually.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle brings audiences back to its classic fictional world with a fun, updated new twist on its well-worn story. So even if some of its subplots and emotional throughlines don’t quite click, the action-packed fun and humor should still make it worth your price of admission.

The film's main appeal is in watching familiar actors pretend to be ordinary kids grappling with their new selves.

The film strikes a nice balance between serviceable, not-overly-slick action scenes—we’ve come a long way from those shoddily animated monkeys—and comedy that’s actually rooted in character, rather than cheap references or stereotypes.

It’s a likeable film which borrows liberally from everything and everyone, and if it’s put together by numbers, well, then it is done capably enough.

The mildly amusing Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is further proof that even the stalest whiff of brand recognition has become preferable to originality. Only part of the blame for that belongs to the studios, but after cannibalizing themselves for much of the last 20 years, Hollywood has clearly eaten their way down to the crumbs.

Welcome to the Jungle isn’t a bad movie. It’s a diverting, mildly amusing, competent bit of big-budget studio product. And maybe those are the stakes we’re now playing for these days.

The action’s passable and Gillan makes a decent fist of an underwritten character. Otherwise, this Jumanji makeover’s a losing game.

It’s like watching the lamest Indiana Jones sequel ever imagined, minus Indiana Jones.