It's more afraid of you than you are of it.note
We play through Jumanji! Andy dodges a swarm of bees! Jon seduces a sleeping child! Pitr drinks a cognac and coffee! Joz punches a butterfly!
Episode 20 of Film Reroll. Based on the 1995 movie.
After a not entirely amiable encounter with his father, young Lonely Rich Kid Alan Parrish finds an old African-themed board game at a construction site. The game is called "Jumanji," and turns out to have the power to summon wild animals, transform its players, and generally alter reality. Now Alan, his friend Sarah, and domestic servants Charles and Anabelle have to avoid all the challenges the game has to throw at them if they are looking for a chance to seal away the evil power that lurks within it.
For this episode, Paulo Quiros created his own (Non-magical, we hope!) playable version of the Jumanji board seen in the film, with tons of new obstacles and enemies for the players to face. Most of them never appear in the campaign - which was expected to run longer than it did - though, the team have seriously considered making a sequel eventually.
It is notable for being the first episode to feature not one but two Original Characters - Charles the Butler and Anabelle the Maid - as part of the main cast, complete with their own character sheets. And also for going so far Off the Rails that the Time Skip (and the eventual Mental Time Travel) doesn't occur, meaning that Judy and Peter - the protagonists from the original story - never even show up!
And don't forget, it's set in '69.
Starring Kara Straitnote as Alan Parrish, Jocelyn "Joz" Vammer as Sarah Whittle, Andy Hoover as Charles, Jon Miller as Anabelle and Paulo Quiros as the Dungeon Master.
Followed by Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey.
Tropes:
- Aborted Arc: Alan's difficult relationship with his father, including his refusal to go to Cliffside School for Boys, are never really resolved. The last meeting between Alan and his father is never shown, and Alan hasn't been alone long enough to really start missing him anyway.
- Adaptational Villainy: Alan's father, Sam Parrish. He was already an emotionally distant father and a Pointy-Haired Boss in the original movie, but here he's become a complete Jerkass. He doesn't get his redemption scene from the end of the film, either.
- Adapted Out: Peter, Judy, Nora, Van Pelt... Basically every character who didn't appear in the 1969 scenes.
- Agent Scully: Both Sarah and Charles believe that the game must be controlled by magnets. However, they do acknowledge that magic might be involved when things start getting really weird.
- Ambiguous Situation: Discussed: When Paulo brings up how the dice rolls in the movie don't add up, Joz states her theory that a round had been cut from filming. Kara calls this into question due to the effects of the game stacking over time, while Jon points out that certain effects go away and come back later (eg. the mosquitos).
- And I Must Scream: Joz becomes considerably distressed when Sarah becomes a tree.Joz: (distressed; near-pleading) I'm a tree! [Kara], I can't do anything!
- Artistic License – History: Played for laughs: Apparently, no one in the Nineties knew what magnets were, and it took the Insane Clown Posse to set the country back on track.
- Ascended Extra: Downplayed with Alan and Sarah. They already made up half of the main cast, but the Time Skip to 1995 no longer happens, so they now retain their roles as Audience Surrogate Kid Heroes throughout the entire story. (Ironic considering that they weren't even in the original book.)
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Sarah goes through this after being turned into a tree, which also leads to her singing the song A Natural Woman
. She gets over it after a while. - Big Creepy-Crawlies: The first monster Alan and Sarah encounter is an insect with a wingspan of five feet. They defeat it by punching it in the face, pouring ice over it, and smashing it with Alan's bike.
- The Big Easy: Anabelle was born in New Orleans, which naturally means that she's well-versed in Hollywood Voodoo and the occult.
- Born Lucky: Andy winds up ending the campaign early by rolling two doubles in a row, and wins Jumanji on the third roll.
- Brick Joke: When Kara decides that Peter is going to bring his bike into the factory to protect it from the bullies, Paulo laments this means they miss out on one of his favorite scenes, where Peter looks out one of the factory's windows and sees the bullies punch his bike. Later on, while inside his dad's office, Peter looks out the window... where it turns out the bullies snuck inside and took his bike anyway. As such, Paulo announces that they're doing just that.
- Brutal Honesty: Sam Parrish's description of his brother.Sam: Even your Uncle Skyler went [to Cliffside Academy for Boys], and they didn't let him in anywhere.
Alan: Was... was he stupid?
Sam: Yes. - Call-Back:
- When Kara’s character finds a chest full of sand, Joz asks her to close her eyes. Given what happened last time, it's hard not to understand Joz’s concern.
- When they're still expecting it to run to multiple episodes, Joz jokes that it will end with her getting a dragon.
- When one of the Jumanji rhymes announces the arrival of a threat that will "eat you out of house and home", the players immediately call back to Jon's inadvertent use of the phrase "ate him out." It's jokingly suggested that Alan will become a "mediocre lawyer" when he grows up, which was the fate of one of the characters in that campaign. Also, the episode ends with the cast singing the theme song to They Walk by Night.
- Celebrity Resemblance: Charles and Anabelle are compared to Tim Curry and Lesley Ann Warren as Wadsworth and Miss Scarlet, respectively.
- Cursed with Awesome: Zig-Zagged. After being transformed into a tree, Sarah starts to panic, as she can't talk or move, but then she realises that she has much better protection against the wild animals than any of the other players. At that point, however, Paulo tells her that one of the upcoming challenges is termites... Fortunately, she has turned back into a human by the point they show up.
- Cutting the Knot: When faced with the prospect of opening a window from the outside in order to let the bees out of the mansion, Paulo points out it won't open from that side. Alan's stance? "It will with rocks."
- Deleted Role: Andy and Jon were originally intending to play Peter and Judy, but because Kara and Joz wound up preventing the time skip, they wind up taking up the roles of Charles and Anabelle (due to Kara indirectly causing Paulo to create said characters).
- Dysfunction Junction: The borderline chaotic nature of the shoe factory's workforcenote causes Peter to openly ask "why did [he] come here to find peace?!"
- Dual Wielding: Sarah briefly wields two pool cues as weapons. Unfortunately, she never really gets to use them.
- Forced Transformation: The end result of Sarah's very first roll in the game? She becomes a tree.
- Genre Savvy: At several points, rather than waiting for the board game's effects to happen, the players opt to keep rolling the dice; the faster they speed through the game, the faster things go back to normal.
- Hideous Hangover Cure: At first, Sarah tries to wake the unconscious Alan by giving him alcohol. When that doesn't work, she instead tries to pour the booze over him! Finally, she gives Alan a mixture of cognac and unfiltered coffee, which does wake him up, but also makes him very hyper-active as well as drunk.
- Insult Backfire: This conversation between Alan and his father.
- It Amused Me:
- Variation: After the second time they do Jumanji's drum music, Jon makes it clear to Andy that he'd be content if they wind up only being the drums.
- After enough time with Drunk Alan Parrish, following the bee argument, Jon outright declares “Sober [Kara] playing Drunk Alan is the best character [they’ve] had on this podcast.”
- Jerkass: Although it can be partially attributed to the alcohol, Alan is noticeably rude in trying to get Charles to take part in the board game, up to and including having this exchange:Charles: Alright... I'll play your game, Young Master Alan.Alan: You've been playing my game since you were born.
- Laser-Guided Karma: It's revealed that Billy the bully broke his hand while messing up Alan's bike.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: This is a dice-based board game based on a movie... about a dice-based board game. The players are pretty much playing Jumanji in real life (minus the supernatural elements).
- Like Father, Like Son: When Alan repeatedly demands Charles that play the board game with him (who is more focused on trying to get the cognac bottle away from him), up to and including threatening to have him fired if he doesn't, Charles just remarks how similar he is to Sam.Alan: I pay your bills.Charles: ...really.Alan: You work for me.Charles: Pulling that card, you're more like your father than I thought.
- Mrs. Robinson:
- Downplayed with Anabelle. There is a bit of Ship Tease between her and Alan, but she seems more interested in Charles, overall.
- The players also argue that, when you take the Mental Time Travel into consideration, Sarah and Alan were basically both this to each other by the end of the original movie (the latter being a gender-inverted example).
- Mythology Gag: Alan's claim that he has started to grow hair in weird places might be a reference to Peter's transformation into a monkey in the original movie.
- Narration Echo:Paulo: You hear a distinct buzzing.
Charles: I hear a distinct buzzing! - Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After Alan blacks out due to the giant butterfly, Sarah decides to wake him up using alcohol (by using it as a smelling salt, having him drink some, and then by just pouring it over him). Alan wakes up trashed.
- Nightmarish Factory: Parrish Shoes. Not because of the working conditions, but rather because the workforce seems to consist entirely of Cloud Cuckoolanders.
- Non Sequitur: "Girls don't poop."
- No, You: Andy and Kara get into a mini argument when the latter tries to dodge and drop to avoid the swarm of bees:Andy: Don't dodge and drop from the bees, they don't move like a bullet, they move like bees, they'll just turn around!Kara: You don't know shit about bees.Andy: I- You don't know shit about bees, you little... jackass...
- Off the Rails: Pretty impressively quick compared to the movie, since we stay in 1969.
- Original Character: Charles and Anabelle, the live-in butler and maid of the Parrish household. They are notably given lots of screentime, and treated as part of the main cast.
- Point of Divergence:
- Alan and Sarah decide to play Rock Paper Scissors (best of three) to figure out who goes first... and Alan winning winds up resulting in both players making it past the first round.
- Instead of grabbing two tokens, Alan grabs all four; as such, like what Peter and Judy wind up having to do in the original movie, Alan and Sarah need to find two more players to continue the game.
- A Rare Sentence: "You can't write tapestries without going to the Moon, you gotta build up to it."
- Random Encounters: Parodied. The players jokingly suggest that one of Alan's bullies might pop out of the duck his family is eating for dinner.
- Running Gag:
- Jokes about the movie being set in '69.
- Regarding the game pieces moving by themselves: "It must be magnets."
- Scary Stinging Swarm: One of the obstacles spawned by the game is a swarm of bees.
- Sequel Hook: After the game has been won, Anabelle takes away the board in order to study it. The team has suggested that this could lead to a sequel set 26 years later, with Peter and Judy as the new Kid Heroes.
- Shaped Like Itself: "What is the bug made of?" "...Bug."
- Shout-Out:
- "On second thought, let us not go to the Nineties. 'Tis a silly decade."
- "It pours the tequila on its face or else it gets the butterfly again."
- "I just had the most horrible dream. You were there, terrifying butterfly was there..." Also a Call-Back to their earlier campaign.
- After Joz attacks the giant insect, Paulo announces that it's failed a fright check. The players ask if it's failed badly enough to acquire a Delusion, and suggest the delusion that it's transformed into Gregor Samsa.
- Jon openly compares Sarah becoming a tree to "straight Apollo and Daphne bullshit".
- While fleeing from a swarm of bees: "Rule number one of Zombieland: Cardio!"
- So Bad, It's Good: Paulo revealing the map he drafted for the Parrish's house winds up briefly causing the episode to grind to a halt due to Kara's genuine delight for the lack of effort taken with it, compared to how Paulo made the Jumanji board and the map of Brantford, New Hampshire. It's openly compared to a five-year-old's drawing.Kara: [T]he Parrish house is just a fucking doodle!
- Writers Can Not Do Math: Dungeon Master Paulo Quiros feels that the original movie had a problem with this. This campaign however manages to avert it, since the plot is dictated by math (through the players' dice rolls) and not the other way around.
- Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: Paulo had to create Charles and Annabelle's character sheets in real time after Alan forces the two of them to come play the game with him.
- You Can't Fight Fate: Kara Strait tries to save Alan's bike from its fate in the movie by bringing it into the shoe factory, inside the front doorway, but the bullies sneak in and steal it anyway.
