User Reviews

This show was a mess. Whereas the book and movie took place in the real world, this show mostly plays out within Jumanji itself, which is a great concept brimming with potential. Unfortunately, little of note was done with it.

The writers do introduce us to a biologically diverse world with jungles, deserts, oceans and ruined temples, populated by giant, dangerous animals (Amusingly, everything has carnivorous teeth, even the insects.) and introduce new villains as well. Each show follows the same simple formula: Judy and Peter get sucked into the game (which happens every time they roll the dice), get chased by animals, defeat some villain, find an artifact, try and fail to free Alan, and solve a clue which conveniently solves their mundane real-world issue. Occasionally, an intriguing concept is introduced, such as where the animals come from, or what purpose Van Pelt serves, but the writers never do anything else with them. Don't even try to make sense of it among the countless plot holes. The ultimate insult is the final episode, a glorified clip show where no questions are answered.

The positives: decent animation and voice acting, and it has a cool instrumental intro sequence. But I really can't recommend this series. The movie achieved in around 90 minutes what this series couldn't in 40 episodes.

Loosely based on the movie of the same name, this series has Judy and Peter stumble onto the game and find Alan trapped inside. As the episodes went on, the trio ventured to various and creative places, as well as encountering some delightful supporting characters. This show had an interesting charm to it, similar to the movie.

Ok so I'm pretty sure that if there was one thing that caused some people to take an immediate dislike to this show it would have to be the visual style and character designs, everything is so jagged and overly-exaggerated and the shape of the characters is so bendy and weird. Even as I kid I was annoyed at first by how ugly and radically different the characters were to their live-action counterparts, but once you get used to the funny look of everything it does give the show a distinctive quirky charm and tone. One little visual touch I think they made a mistake with though was in giving just about every animal sharp monster teeth, even the birds! I know it was probably just to make the perilous wildlife of Jumanji more frightening and fantastical, but the fangs were dumb guys, sorry! And the writing wasn't the wittiest ever but I thought the ideas of a lot of the episodes were fairly clever in how the challenge that they had to overcome was always built around the most wonderful rhyming clues, I wonder if the show's writers wrote down a lot of those profound limericks and then picked them out of a hat and decided how'd they'd construct a specific around the chosen clue. One of the best episodes is when they journey through the desert and find the fortress of one who declares himself the master of Jumanji, only for him to turn out to be just another lost player who never figured out his clue, and who with our heroes help eventually solves it by giving up on ever solving it, his clue being "Try as you might to escape your fate, you'll never pass through the gateless gate." Again the characters aren't the most super-interesting ever but they do grow on you, and by the end you really do care about them and want Alan to be freed from the game, which he finally is in the last episode, which I find to be a more satisfying ending than the one in the movie. I find that this series does a greater job of building on the world of Jumanji and really brings it to life, for me it took what I loved best about the movie and expanded on it, we get to see those "things you'll only see in your nightmares" and a lot more, it was awesome how it explored the lore without ever directly spelling out what it's really meant to mean, with Van Pelt's "hunt or be hunted" outlook seeming to sum it up. I loved the new villains and characters that they introduced, especially Tim Curry as the hilariously avaricious and tricky to deal with Trader Slick, who wasn't a villain exactly, although his items often proved to do the gang more harm than good! Another really cool new character was the seldom-seen Grim Reaper like Stalker who emerges from the fiery mechanical underworld of Jumanji whenever the game itself is threatened, now for an animated series he was just plain scary! So it's not a perfect show or quite as great as I once remembered, but it is still fun and inventive adventure to watch and definitely worth rediscovering as an unsung gem of a series from back in the day. Very cool beans! X

For its time it was a pretty good children's cartoon. The artwork was edgy and the theme music was engaging, the creatures looked pretty scary/sinister and the rules based, cause and effect reality created by the Jumanji game gave the environment character and some of the malevolent characters a certain pathos. Professor Ibsen in the episode Master Builder was a direct reference to the Norwegian playwright Henrick Ibsen, who wrote a play called Master Builder and contains parallels to the character. Tim Curry is the voice to Slick.

Favorite episodes include Armageddon, where the rules of Jumanji begin to break down and Branford, a game version of the "real world" where Peter and Judy come from.

"Jumanji" the T.V. series was as good as the Jumanji movie, which I really enjoyed. I used to watch this show on UPN before I went to school in the morning.

"Jumanji" the T.V. series was sort of based on the movie. Peter and Judy would go into the game everyday to see Alan. My favorite character was Peter. He was clever when it came to solving the clues.

My favorite episode was the one when Aunt Nora went into the game. That episode was hysterical. My favorite part of each episode was when Peter and Judy first receive the clue because the clue always sounded very interesting. I, along with Judy and Peter, would try to solve the clue.

Overall I really enjoyed this series and was sad to see it leave. I give this show 9/10 stars.

I just want to say that I liked the Robin Williams movie from 1995. It had a likable cast, solid acting, great action, terrific special effects, and some wonderful music from James Horner although the first few minutes were a tad bit slower and some of the scenes were apparently dark. So, when I saw this TV show adaptation of the movie as a kid, I was virtually impressed, although it may not be a classic since the third season had some weaker, yet very interesting episodes (although the final episode where Alan finally gets out of the jungle was great).

Seeing as how this was made by Klasky-Csupo, the company who made The Rugrats and The Wild Thornberrys, I think they did a great job with this show. The story lines for this show are very creative, especially in the first two seasons and they had a charm to them just like the movie. The pathos from the Jumanji game gave some an atmospheric tone to the environment and it's presented so lively. The characters designs, although weird, are at least tolerable. The voice acting is also pretty good too. Debi Derryberry did great as Judy and Ashley Johnson did great as Peter as did Bill Fagerbakke as Alan Parish. Tim Curry also did great as Trader Slick and the other voice actors voiced some of the new characters pretty well. Even the theme song was engaging.

Overall, not a classic, but a great show nonetheless and definitely worth-watching to fans of the movie!

This was one of the best cartoon series I ever saw. I don't see why it isn't on television anymore. On the last episode, it was nice how Alan finally made it out of Jumanji. I would love it if they put this back on t.v. I use to watch it every mourning. The reason why more people didn't watch it was because not too many kids knew about the show. It wasn't being promoted enough. If it got promoted more than kids would be going crazy over this show. This was the kind of cartoon that keeps you glued to your sit. I will always remember this cartoon, Jumanji, that I used to watch when I was a younger kid. They need to put this back on national television so that the kids can have something better to watch.

I really enjoyed the then-unusual artwork, now rather prevalent in animation-and the fact that the characters were usually in the land of JUMANJI itself, unlike the film which took place on Terra Firma.