Take the 1995 hit Jumanji, launch it into outer space, and you’ve got Zathura. Well, almost.
The premises of the two films are very, very similar. Kids get left alone in big house, kids find old board game stashed away, kids play board game, all hell breaks loose when the game spills over into reality. But in this case, it’s not the perils of darkest Africa the kids unleash on themselves; it’s the perils of darkest space. Meteor showers! Aliens! Stranded astronauts! Ruined furniture! As you might expect, the film also sneaks in some of the perils of sibling rivalry. And even more than superior special effects, the superior handling of the relationship between the kids is what distinguishes Zathura from its ten-year-old predecessor.
In the film, the kids in question are six-and-three-quarters-year-old Danny (Jonah Bobo) and his 10-year-old brother Walter (Josh Hutcherson). Walter treats his little brother exactly like I treated my little brother in our youth: as badly as possible without actually killing him. (One of the best things about this film is how genuinely unlikeable Walter is for most of the way; it’s a great lesson for every older brother who’s still kicking the crap out his of weaker sibling just because he can.)
The film keeps the focus tight on the two boys throughout. It wastes no time getting their father (Tim Robbins) out of the house; we never actually see their mother. There is a teen sister (played by Kristen Stewart), but her presence hardly matters. In fact, she spends a good deal of the time cryonically frozen in the bathroom after one of the boys has an unlucky turn in the game. The only adult on hand is a twentysomething astronaut (Dax Shepard), who helps the boys out after they rescue him early in the game.
The game itself works a lot like the eponymous board game from Jumanji. Each player takes a turn—a nice touch is that the game will only work for the player whose turn it is, thus ensuring fairness—and waits to see what the hell will happen. And in a game that can uproot your entire house and transplant it into the middle of the galaxy, anything can happen.
A lot of things happen—which gives the effects crew a chance to show how far computer imagery has come since Jumanji’s poorly rendered monkeys. The effects have an appealing retro-futuristic feel inspired by things like the 1960s version of Lost in Space and the 1930s Flash Gordon serials. There are rocket ships with big single engines at the back, and a giant robot with visible gears, metal antennae sticking out of its head, and a booming voice that keeps saying “Emergency! Emergency!”
Zathura is a pleasant surprise from start to finish. Director Jon Favreau (yes, that Jon Favreau) could have made a lazy, effects-ridden rehash—the equivalent of a played-out board game. But instead, he goes to the trouble of doing two things right: he makes the central relationship matter, and he makes the action matter to that relationship. The result is a movie worth taking your kids to see—even if you don’t have kids.
(3/4)