Tag: Jake Kasdan

REVIEW: Jumanji: The Next Level [2019]

Jared Mobarak

Wherever they may be. The first cinematic adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg‘s Jumanji brought the board game’s wild jungle environment to its players’ quiet suburbia for a crazy survival adventure. Jake Kasdan and company could have easily done the exact same thing again with their reboot/sequel hybrid Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle due to over twenty years having past since its predecessor’s release, but they chose to breathe new life into the property instead. And it worked beautifully to earn critical, creative, and financial success. They revamped board and dice…

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REVIEW: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle [2017]

Jared Mobarak

Find the missing piece. The end of Jumanji shows Alan and Sarah chaining up the board game before throwing it over a bridge into water. Later we see it washed ashore on a beach, buried in the sand with chains removed as people walk by speaking what sounds like French. So we wonder how long after the main plot this Planet of the Apes ending is set. Did it cross the Atlantic? There’s real fun to this abstract epilogue with infinite possibilities, especially since the unlikely sequel Jumanji: Welcome to…

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REVIEW: Bad Teacher [2011]

Jared Mobarak

“Peanut Butter everywhere …” I wasn’t the biggest fan when it was called Bad Santa and took place in a department store, so, suffice it to say, Bad Teacher’s foul-mouthed comedy never quite hit home. Scribed by writers from “The Office” and, what is sadly much lower on my anticipation list now, Ghostbusters III, Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg have one thing going for them—laughs. If it weren’t for a healthy amount of laugh-out-loud instances, the void of any engaging conflict coupled with the broadest performances I’ve seen in quite…

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REVIEW: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story [2007]

Jared Mobarak

“The wrong kid died” That quote above could not have been more correct, however, not in the way Pa Cox intended. I was thinking more along the lines of wishing young Dewey had cut me in half, because had I been unable to watch the rest of the hour and a half to come, it would have been a much better experience. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is easily the worst movie I have seen all year long. There have been some bad films, but this was the first…

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