Two squabbling brothers are propelled into deepest, darkest space while playing a mysterious game they discovered in the basement of their old house. On their fantastic journey, they are joined by a stranded astronaut and must survive meteor showers, hostile lizard-like aliens, a rocket-propelled robot run amok and an intergalactic spaceship battle. But their greatest peril lies ahead. For unless they finish the game and reach the planet Zathura, they are doomed to be trapped in outer space forever. Based on the best-selling book by the acclaimed children's writer Chris Van Allsburg.

What can be said about the movie, it was clearly the poor mans version of Jumanji. A lesser movie that doesn’t even close to living up the original. The movie is horrible by any means but it really isn’t that great either. It is vanilla, somewhat plain and something familiar and slightly tiresome at times. The story is there much like Jumanji it has a fantastic idea for a movie about a mythical board game where all the events taking place in the game take place around the players in real life as well. But while the story elements were there as it was fun to see alien races, meteor showers, and astronauts everything else just didn’t seem as good. For one thing the special effects could only be called ok, the movie is being made ten years after Jumanji there is no way that it should not have far superior effects-wise but sadly they are far inferior. It might have hurt to confine the story to the house this time, as they are never really to expand beyond its walls, which would have been fantastic. Also the story felt rushed and there was no true protagonist like the hunter this time. An ok movie that is fun but its only a vanilla and somewhat mediocre sequel to a far superior movie in Jumanji,

One of the bigger letdowns had to be the acting this time there is no Robin Williams to carry the film and the child actors never really sell the movie. This is almost always a mistake, it is ok to use child actors it is rarely ok to expect them to carry the movie all on their own. Tim Robbins helps set up the movie but he is off stage by the time the real action begins and Dax Shepard makes an appearance half way through the movie but if Dax Shepard is to be your saving grace you are in trouble. I think the kids might have almost done a better job than Dax and that’s saying a lot. Jonah Bobo is the better of the two boys but neither of them is able to carry the movie and a presence like Robin Williams was needed. Kristen Stewart does an ok job as the sister but then again she too is barely in the movie it’s the two boys who are mostly on the screen and they fell just short of making the movie more than just a poor mans sequel. That’s what the movie is but it’s more like a straight to video sequel where everything is of lesser quality and they didn’t try to hard to be better than the original. Fun, action packed but still very vanilla,
3 stars out of 5