YMMV / Jumanji

• Adaptation Displacement: The movies are more well-known than the original book.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • About Van Pelt. Is he perhaps a sociopath who hunts human beings just for pure sadism, or maybe he's a Noble Demon who just follows the game's rules and could also be redeemable if he had the chance? There's also another, infinitely more horrifying interpretation. What if Van Pelt was just another poor soul trapped in Jumanji like Alan was, but was either never rescued or was killed before finishing the game, leading to him becoming twisted into part of the game itself?
  • Then there's Jumanji itself. It's nearly always assumed that the game is an entity that exists solely to cause destruction as best as it can, but the fact that only a few people can hear its drumbeats begs this question: Could Jumanji be a sinister (if not outright malevolent) version of Elliott the Dragon, that seeks out people who are having problems in their lives, uses its dangers as a means to face their fears, and only allows the game to end when all players have overcome their troubles?
• Angst? What Angst?: Sarah discusses this. She had a Trauma Conga Line growing up while futilely telling the adults around her that a board game sucked up her best friend, being forced to go on meds and questioning her sanity. Then said friend returns to her doorstep all grown up and makes her play the game again, despite her protests that it ruined both their lives and she can't lose him again. Yet when the timeline resets, meaning none of the trauma happened, she says that she misses knowing what it was like to be an adult because it felt better knowing what was to come. Alan reassures her they don't have to remember the bad things, only Judy and Peter, as well as how to save their parents. Sure enough, in the new timeline, Sarah and Alan have a happy life while giving a Big "NO!" on hearing that Judy and Peter's parents are planning the ski trip that will kill them as Alan quickly finagles a way to stop the event, showing they made the best of both worlds.
• Critical Dissonance: Critically, it received mixed reviews, but you wouldn't know that based on how much of a favorite it was (and still is) with audiences.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Van Pelt is fondly remembered for his costume design, ambiguous origins and function within the game (see above), and Jonathan Hyde's delightful performance. He falls a bit short of Evil Is Cool what with getting outsmarted by preteens, but such is life sometimes.
  • David Alan Grier as Carl was widely praised for his hilarious chemistry with Robin Williams while dealing with the effects of the game
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Robin Williams believed that the movie is based on childrens' fear of being abandoned by their parents.
• Fanfic Fuel: During the 20-plus years it took for the book to receive an official sequel, several readers came up with their own follow-ups. On the Zathura movie's DVD, Van Allsburg admits that receiving some of these in the mail helped him decide to share his own story about the boys, as he didn't actually write Jumanji's ending with the intent of giving them their own book.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Its massive popularity in Japan led to the release of a Pachinko game in 2007.
• Harsher in Hindsight: At the end of the book, Judy and Peter's neighbor Mrs. Budwig laments that her sons, Danny and Walter, often start games without finishing — shortly before the boys take Jumanji from the park. In the Zathura book, the game indeed gets cut short, but not because the boys lose interest in it; instead a black hole sucks up Walter before he can finish bringing Danny back to Earth (although after the black hole sends Walter back to the ending of Jumanji, he convinces Danny not to bring the game home at all).
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Nora is doing her best to be the Cool Aunt to Peter and Judy while grieving her brother and sister-in-law. The third-quel reveals that in the new timeline she's a successful businesswoman and just plain content to have her family alive.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Robin Williams' character here has spent his whole life surviving in the jungle inside the game, without a toilet in sight; so when he finally sees one again after so long he's close to tears of joy for no longer resorting to "banana leaves". In 2006, his highly-urbanized character in RV is impressed with resorting to fern leaves, "nature's broom", during his family's outdoor adventure.
  • One of the last threats that the heroes have to deal with are giant spiders, which is hilarious given that Kirsten Dunst would later star as Mary-Jane Watson in the Spider-Man Trilogy.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "What year is it?!", originally a straight example of the trope, has become an observation of older fads or trends becoming popular again.
  • "You killed her..."
• Narm: "You miserable coward, come back and face me like a man!" is hard to take seriously since it's implying that the unarmed Alan should take on Van Pelt, who's wielding a BFG. To be fair, Van Pelt is probably just trying to intimidate Alan and he probably WANTS unarmed Alan not to run away.
• Narm Charm:
  • For many, the effects of the creatures nowadays could fall into Narm territory due to the CGI not aging well. However, it falls into the Narm Charm territory if one is to just assume that the reason the creatures look weird is because they're created from a magic board-game.
  • The statements given by the game whenever someone rolls are very often a Painful Rhyme...but they also manage to be genuinely creepy.
• One-Scene Wonder: The kind old squatter living in Alan's father's office in the abandoned shoe factory who informs Alan on what happened to his father and the company following his disappearance.
• Retroactive Recognition: Young Sara is portrayed by future Broadway star and country singer Laura Bell Bundy.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • None of the CGI has aged well. However, the monkeys are arguably the most glaring example. They stood out even during the time of release due to their poorly rendered fur. Then again, most of the animals (CGI or otherwise) have a slightly stylised look, as opposed to photo-realistic, so maybe they're supposed to look a little off.
  • The lion looks like a bad taxidermy job at best.
  • In a scene that shouldn't even have required special effects, when Van Pelt hands over the gold coins mentioned in Screw the Rules, I Have Money!, his arm and the coins falling have a very strange after-image look to them as if they're made of sand.
  • The spiders toward the end of the film. The film was dangerously close to going over budget so they had to cut back and rely on puppets for the scene. It's incredibly obvious once they appear, especially since they move in a very jerky, wooden way. Never stops them from being any less terrifying... actually, it might make them even scarier, since it gives the impression that they're very unnatural spiders more dangerous than the norm.
  • Several times throughout the film, the game pieces will not be on their proper lanes. A prime example is when Alan opens the game for Sarah to see after they have reunited in the present, and you'll see, clear as day, that two pieces are on the same lane. Similarly, the dice rolls do not coincide with where the game pieces should be on the game board. In fact, the game ends too early considering that a lot of the dice rolls are low and the rolls that aren't seen wouldn't be enough to make up the difference even if they rolled an eleven.^note Rolling a twelve would be impossible since no one gets doubles after Peter's first roll. The Blu-ray release of Jumanji features a gag reel. At one point, Robin Williams rolls the dice, removes a playing piece from its spot, and places it somewhere else before telling a joke. So the game pieces jumping around has been solved: Robin Williams thought it was funny to mess with them and nobody bothered to put them back!
  • The Jumanji stampede destroys the front door of the Parrish house... only for it to be repaired when the group returns to the house.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Carl and Nora for the most part stay as bystanders to the whole Jumanji fiasco despite their connections to the main cast. They could have been there to help out during the final rolls at the Parrish house, but Carl never returned after being swept away during the monsoon roll, and despite Nora returning, Peter ends up locking her in the closet for her own safety.
  • Alan's childhood bully Billy Jessup doesn't appear again after stealing Alan's bike in the prologue and is only mentioned twice inconsequentially in 1995 as a source of textbook angst regarding the former's relationship with Sarah. It could've been interesting to see an older Billy amongst the destitute folk in '95 and see how, if any, impact Alan's disappearance had on his life and how'd they would interact as adults either as a mortal antagonist or as a potential ally.
• Underused Game Mechanic: The gameboard has certain spaces where two lanes have to overlap. Whatever happens when two game pieces land on the same overlap spot is anyone's guess.
• Unintentional Period Piece: To the point where it was lampshaded in the sequel. The idea of a cursed board game causing havoc to those who play it dates the film to before video games fully displaced board games as the group "play" activity of choice among kids, a point raised in the prologue to the sequel when Alex decides to pass on playing it in favor of his video games — causing the board game to transform into a video game cartridge instead.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Given all the frenetic energy and chaos we see spring forth from the game, this is very intense for a family movie. So much so that Roger Ebert himself was convinced children would be terrified of it.
• The Woobie: Almost everyone, to a degree.
  • Alan because he was sucked into the game; Sarah because she was called crazy for twenty-six years and spent 2000 hours in therapy; Judy and Peter because they lost their parents plus had to deal with the game, which nearly killed the former via poisonous plant barb and turned the latter into a monkey. Aunt Nora because there's a lion in her bedroom and she's trying to do her best by two troubled kids while likely dealing with her own grief over their parents' deaths. Carl because well, the entire setting hates him. Kind of unavoidable, since the premise is Everything Trying to Kill You.
  • Sam can be considered a Jerkass Woobie, due to being a well meaning but cold father who never really showed Alan how much he truly loved him.
  • The fat short-legged rhino that doggedly lags behind the stampede, grunting and laboriously puffing along in its herd's wake, manages to achieve Woobie status without even getting a close-up.

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