Zathura

The lesson in this movie is clear. If you want your children to get along, appreciate you, or just stop acting like a couple of brats, simply force them to play Zathura, Jumanji, or any other life-threatening adventure game. Assuming they survive the many perilous encounters with various lethal creatures and situations, they will become sufficiently frightened and overwhelmed that any previous behavioral deficiencies will have been completely eliminated by the game’s conclusion.

Zathura was just as good as I expected it to be—fun, innocent, and heavy on the “appreciate your siblings, they’re all you’ve got” theme. 10 year-old Walter (Josh Hutcherson) and 6 year-old Danny (Jonah Bobo) get to spend 4 days a week with their dad after their parents’ divorce. The brothers heatedly compete for their dad’s attention, each wanting to outdo the other, but unfortunately for Danny, being the younger of the two, he simply can’t beat Walter at much of anything. Walter, for his part, resents Danny for simply existing and finds his little brother’s persistent attempts at gaining his affection annoying and completely useless. When their father leaves for a meeting, instructing the boys’ older sister Lisa (Kristen Stewart) to watch them in his absence, Danny continues to make endless bids for Walter’s attention, which result in his being locked in the basement after Walter finally loses his patience. He stumbles upon an old board game called Zathura, and brings it upstairs to show Walter in another endeavor to get his brother to play with him. Walter thinks the game just looks dumb and old (which it does), so Danny plays by himself. He finally succeeds in getting Walter’s attention, however, when Sports Center is interrupted by flaming meteors crashing through the roof; which, to be fair, is certainly one way to get your brother to notice you. It is then that the boys realize they are floating in space and must finish the game in order to get back home. Meanwhile, their sister continues sleeping undisturbed upstairs, oblivious to their new interstellar predicament.

Of course, as in Jumanji, the game produces all manner of disturbing obstacles with which the boys are forced to contend. It spirals them into a gravity field, sends Walter a defective robot operating under the mistaken impression that Walter is an alien life form that must be killed, puts a stranded but helpful astronaut in their path, and forces them to face Zorgons—heat-seeking, meat-eating lizard monsters that burn up everything with which they come into contact. But before all these adventures can take place, one of the boys' turns results with Lisa being frozen in cryogenic sleep for five spins, presumably so that the movie can continue with its plot to compel the brothers to work together through the shared hardships. The astronaut (Dax Shepard) helps the boys out with their Zorgon problem by simply throwing a burning couch out the window... because Zorgons, it seems, are simply a bunch of rednecks who just want to burn shit. The adventures continue, the boys fight and scream at each other (which was almost a little too realistic for my tastes), and their sister eventually wakes up to discover any babysitter's worst fear: the kids have completely and thoroughly destroyed the house.

I liked Zathura, although not quite as much as Jumanji. It lacked the darker and more sinister elements of its predecessor, but it was still quite exciting to watch. I especially liked that the threatening creatures/situations didn't necessarily just disappear, as they did in Jumanji, when the next person took his turn, meaning that each challenge must be faced rather than hurridly dismissed. There weren't really any parts that dragged unecessarily, and there was a great twist toward the end that I honestly did not anticpate. The acting was good, and the dialogue was funny and well-written, so I never lost interest in the story. I've no doubt that this movie will appeal to kids, but honestly, I think it's a decent and imaginative film that most people would enjoy watching. I definitely recommend it.