Zathura

Zathura is "a new adventure from the world of Jumanji". But really this movie is "a poor sci-fi twisted retelling of Jumanji." Jumanji was great. I loved it. But Zathura lacks almost all of the elements that made Jumanji great.

The plot is not original. In fact you can barely tell it isn't Jumanji. Jumanji had an amazing cast with Robin Williams, Kirsten Dunst, Bonnie Hunt, et al. But Zathura comes up with Tim Robbins all by himself and not even playing a major role. The actors that are left are pretty flat. No one does a terrible job but there isn't anyone there to carry everyone either. The sci-fi twist was nice but predictable. If you saw the trailer then you pretty much got the whole movie.

The big "plot twist" is introduced right about at the end but the writers fail to ever explain how the plot twist actually works and, if you really stop and think about it, it doesn't. At all. Whatsoever. So the movie ends up not making any sense at all. Often I am the only person to pick up on these things but in this case I was not even the person to mention it so you know that it has to be bad.

After all of this I don't want to come out and say that Zathura was a bad movie. But Jumanji left it with a lot to live up to and, quite frankly, it just doesn't. The movie is basically entertaining but shallow and frustrating at times. Zathura commits one of the cardinal sins of movie making: failing to make a protagonist. This isn't to say that there isn't a "star" of the movie. The two brothers who play the game are clearly intended to be our protagonist. But the children are both so mean, rotten and dumb that you find yourself not caring whether or not they live and leaning more and more towards not. Not caring for the fates of the lead characters is a sure indicator of pending boredom.

If you have the movie close at hand and there is nothing on then you will likely have a much better time than you would surfing from channel to channel. But you have access to a decent collection I suggest looking a little further for something that will be more enjoyable.