Finally watched it

I'm pretty sure it was meant to be based in the Jumanji universe since the beginning but yeah it's a good movie but it's losely tied to the original.

I'm glad at least it wasn't that bad.

I’m seeing it now, for the first time, and I am enjoying it much
more than I thought that I would. I never much liked the original Jumanji. It was similar to a movie that I like very much, Joe Dante’s Gremlins, but in a bad way. Both are subversive films. The audience walks into the theater expecting a kid-friendly flick, and gets slapped with terror. Gremlins rocks because it kicks what has become our version of Christmas in the nutsack, and because of Phoebe Cate’s monologue description of her daddy dressing up as Santa and breaking his neck trying to
climb down the chimney, not being discovered till the family smelled him decaying! Jumanji posed itself as a lighthearted Robin Williams romp, not tied to any holiday, then scared the toadstools out of little kids. Gremlins is satiric and acerbic. Jumanji is just plain
mean. THIS movie is throwaway fun, but it includes the remarkable achievement of being the one and only film in which I actually like Jack Black. On the scale of repulsive things, at the very bottom there is eating a Leper-shit sandwich, and below that there is Jack Black. His work here, as it young and hot and solipsistic Bethany trapped in the body of a corpulent middle-aged man won me over.

Jack black shouldn't be acting like a girl

it's multiple times better to Next Level.
i did enjoy it as well.. not the best movie ever. just works somehow.

I enjoyed it more than I expected. It was a little old fashioned in a good way, everyone was funny, most especially Karen Gillian, plus a shout-out for Bobby Cannavale who made a very good baddy.