Jumanji

Chris Van Allsburg’s 1981 picture book won the Caldecott Medal, and it contains no Alan Parrish. In the book only Peter and Judy play the game. The emotional spine of the film, a man who lost twenty six years inside it, is pure screenwriting invention, and that explains the odd balance you feel while watching: a chase premise with a lost childhood drama bolted on afterwards, so the set pieces and the grief never quite share a register. The second thing to weigh is the age of the effects. Industrial Light and Magic wrote two new tools for this production, iSculpt for animal facial expression and the first convincing digital hair put on screen, used on the monkeys and the lion. Those were the frontier in 1995 and they are precisely the shots that date the film now. Bradley Pierce’s transformation went the other way, built from prosthetics across three and a half hours in the chair every day for two and a half months, and it still unsettles. Robin Williams turned the first draft down and signed only after rewrites, saving his improvising for alternate takes with Bonnie Hunt. Not for: small children. Roger Ebert objected to the rating, and the frightening element is a boy sprouting fur and fangs, not the animals.