Jumanji Book & Movie Essay, Research Paper
Jumanji, a classic story which started out as a children’s book has also been converted into the
movie media form.
Jumanji, a children’s picture book which was written and illustrated by Chris Van Ellsberg in
1981, Jumanji was the Caldecott Medal Winner of 1982, with some of the most detailed pictures
I personally have ever seen done by a free hand illustrator. The book Jumanji is about two
children, Peter and Judy, whose parents go out to the opera one night. Peter and Judy decide that
they are bored and go for a walk outside in the park across the street. Peter finds a board game
lying by a tree named “Jumanji”. The children bring Jumanji home to play to play with it. After
setting Jumanji up on the card table in the living room, Judy reads the directions, “?Jumanji, a
young people’s jungle adventure especially designed for the bored and restless. A.) Player selects
piece and places it in the deepest jungle. B.) Player rolls dice and moves piece along path
through the dangers of the jungle. C.) First player to reach Jumanji and yell the city’s name aloud
is the winner. D.) VERY IMPORTANT: ONCE THE GAME IS STARTED IT WILL NOT BE
OVER UNTIL ONE PLAYER REACHES THE GOLDEN CITY.’” When Judy finishes reading
the directions aloud, the children start playing Jumanji. Peter wanted to roll the dice first, he
rolled a seven. Suddenly Judy saw a lion sitting on the piano and the lion started to walk toward
the children. Peter jumped up from the chair, ran up stairs into a bedroom, crawled under a bed,
the lion got his head caught under the bed, and Peter locked the lion in there. Peter wanted to
give up at this point, but Judy said that they must finish the game so it would go away. As the
game went on, more and more wild animals were appearing in the house along with torrential
rains and even a lost tour guide sitting on a dollhouse looking at his map. The animals were
tearing apart the house and it was a big, old mess!!! Peter looked behind Judy and saw a snake
creeping from the mantle going straight at her. It was now her turn to roll, Judy had to roll
quickly to end the game and save her life. Judy rolls what she needs and screams, “Jumanji!!!!”.
All of a sudden, the room fills up with and when it clears, the house is as clean as it was before
their parents left. Soon Peter and Judy’s parents came home and did not suspect a thing. The two
children washed up for bed and then worked on finishing up a puzzle. Jumanji, the movie was on
the big screen around December of 1995. This movie is a little different from Chris Van
Ellsberg’s Jumanji, but the basic story is still the same just with a little more background
information of the game. Jumanji starts with two children burying a game deep into the earth,
years later to be discovered by Alan Parrish, the young boy of an (seems to be) uncaring shoe
factory owner. No sooner does Alan get home and get the game set up, his friend Sarah comes
over to see Alan. The two of them sit down to play the game. No sooner does Alan roll, it’s a 13
and he is sucked into the game. Sarah cannot explain what she has seen to anyone who believes
her. The next scene is 26 years later and two children, Peter and Judy move into a huge old
house. After settling in, the two children go up into the attic to “explore”, and this is where they
find a board game named Jumanji. Peter sets the game up and Judy reads the directions aloud.
The directions were almost word for word from the book. When Peter tosses the dice, the game
pieces move along the board by themselves. Judy and Peter hear a noise from downstairs in one
of the rooms. They go to look and see a lion walking around downstairs. Both scared, retreat
back up into the attic. Judy says that they must finish up the game, like the directions stated.
After a few rolls of the dice more and more animals started appearing and soon a hunter was in
the house hunting for the animals. When the hunter notices the kids, he goes after them.
Suddenly a man looking like a Tarzan-type, jungle-man with a long beard and an outfit made
with leaves resembled a Hawaiian skirt appeared and scared the hunter off. After the hunter was
long gone, the lion ran after the children and the jungle-man quickly reacts and runs into a
bedroom and the lion followed , very simply the jungle-man closes the door, with the lion
trapped in there in there. Now the jungle-man was thanking the children for saving him, he was
trapped in a jungle for 26 years and the children saved him by rolling a 13. He explained that he
was Alan Parrish and how he got trapped in the game. Then he runs over his old friend Sarah’s
house. Alan finds her and explained all of that happened to him. Sarah joins the two children and
plays the game with them. Wild things started happening, monkeys in the kitchen, a snake, and
lots of things similar to the Jumanji book, but only to be extremely exaggerated with the use of
computerized visual effects. My only complaint is that all of the animals in the movie were to
obvious as computerized, they looked a little too light to be realistic. Besides my complaint, I
actually enjoyed this movie. Jumanji is an all out action movie from beginning to end. The four
characters, Sarah, Alan, Peter, and Judy are constantly running from the wild animals and the
hunter chasing after them. Of coarse the movie comes to a wrap when the game is won and all is
well. After everything returns to normal, the movie switches back into time 26 years, when Alan
Parrish is a little boy again in his house finishing the game up. When Alan’s father comes back
into the house and Alan greets him with a big hug, and says how he has missed his father. Mr.
Parrish says that he only has been gone for five minutes. Jumanji both the children’s book and
now a movie are alike in a lot of ways, but different in others. For instance the movie goes back
into the history of the game Jumanji, and tells a much different and more adventurous tale of
Peter and Judy’s experience with the game. The main differences with the book and movie were
the characters and wild animal actions when they appear. Alan Parrish was not in the book,
neither was Sarah. The same goes with a scene in the book where a rain storm is “raining
buckets” in the living room and the lost tour guide sitting on a doll house. Instead of a tour guide,
the movie uses a hunter who is after all of them with an elephant gun. There is a scene with the
first animal, where there is a lion and it gets locked in a bedroom. The book has Peter lock the
door, and the movie has Alan trap the lion the bed room. I felt that both Jumanji, both the book
and movie were enjoyable to read and watch. I only two complaints about the movie, first the
computer animated animals looked too much like they were derived from a computer because the
colors were a lighter shade of color when compared to everything else in the room. And my
second complaint is that Jumanji’s (the movie) action and sequent of events were at a rapid pace
and hard for me to keep up. Basically, if I looked away for a minute I would have missed how a
certain scene or character entered the movie. Besides those two complaints of mine, Jumanji was
an enjoyable movie to watch. The same goes with the book.
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