Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)

There seems to have been a recent trend for providing late-in-the-day sequels. This year we've had Trainspotting 2 (21 years later), Blade Runner (35 years), and this month Jumanji (22 years).

Surprisingly, they broadly seem to have worked, managing to understand what worked with the original, without being a poor replica of it.

Jumanji, coming from Sony Pictures (which hasn't had a stellar track record of late) is a funny, imaginative reworking of the original idea into something that works for the gamer generation.

The central performances (Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart and Karen Gillan), all of whom are in some way playing in opposition to their characters (Johnson for example is the in-game avatars for an allergy-prone, hyper-nervous nerd), are all played well, the juxtaposition of character with avatar hitting just the right spot.

I actually found it a better sequel than I would have thought the original film deserved.