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Zathura Our rating: Rate this movie   MPAA rating: PG (for fantasy action and peril, and some language) Genre: Family, Fantasy Theater release: November 11, 2005 by Columbia Pictures Directed by: Jon Favreau Runtime: 1 hour 53 minutes Cast: Jonah Bobo (Danny), Josh Hutcherson (Walter), Dax Shepard (Astronaut), Kristin Stewart (Lisa), Tim Robbins (Dad), Frank Oz (voice of Robot) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Zathura is about two kids who play a board game that comes to life, and the grown-up they meet once they are trapped inside the game. If this already sounds a wee bit familiar, it could be because you are thinking of Jumanji, the movie featuring Robin Williams, Kirsten Dunst, and a whole lot of special effects that came out ten years ago. The similarity between the two films, story-wise, is no coincidence, since both are based on illustrated children's books by Chris Van Allsburg (who also wrote The Polar Express). In Jumanji, the board game threw the main characters into a jungle; in Zathura, the board game throws the main characters into outer space. But the films are guided by different sensibilities.

Jumanji, directed by former Lucasfilm bigwig Joe Johnston at a time when CGI was the hot new thing, emphasized the special effects. Zathura, however, is directed by Jon Favreau, an actor who was best known for the R-rated buddy movies he made with Vince Vaughn—including Swingers, which he wrote, and Made, which he also directed—before he took a sharp turn toward the family market two years ago with the surprisingly popular Will Ferrell holiday movie Elf. So, while Zathura still has plenty of special effects, you can sense that Favreau would rather keep the story grounded in the relationship between six-year-old Danny (Jonah Bobo) and ten-year-old Walter (Josh Hutcherson), two brothers who get on each other's nerves until they discover they literally need each other to survive.

Favreau, working from a script by David Koepp (Spider-Man, Jurassic Park) and John Kamps (The Borrowers) that significantly expands Van Allsburg's original story, starts things on a very ordinary note—so ordinary it's kind of dull, actually—as Danny and Walter compete for the attention of their recently divorced father (Tim Robbins). Walter is good at playing catch, but Danny must settle for being told that he has a good imagination. Danny wants to watch Spongebob Squarepants, but Walter sneers that that stuff is for "babies," so he changes the channel to something sports-related. Finally something happens that interferes with Dad's work, so he steps outside and leaves the boys to the care of their big sister Lisa (Panic Room's Kristen Stewart), who has reached that stage of adolescence where days are for sleeping and nights are for hanging out with friends your parents find suspicious.

Lisa is still in bed, sleeping the day away, when Danny snoops around their dad's new house and finds an old board game under the basement steps. He takes it to the living room to show it to his older brother, who remains indifferent. And then Danny turns a key, pushes a button, and watches a number spin on the game's counter. One of the mechanical pieces moves along its track the designated number of spaces, and then a card pops out—a card that says, "Meteor shower: Take evasive action." The hot stones that slice through the ceiling and into the floor finally get Walter's attention, and when the boys look outside, they discover that their house is floating in space, apparently near one of Saturn's rings.

Too late, the boys discover that the only way back home is to finish the game. And that means many more turns of the key and pressings of the button, each of which carries with it the risk that a new card may or may not signal something even more hazardous and terrifying. On the down side, the boys encounter a rampaging robot (voice of Frank Oz) and some creepy lizard-like aliens called Zorgons, all of whom do much damage to the house. On the up side, they pick up a "stranded astronaut" (Punk'd star Dax Shepard) who seems to know how to deal with the Zorgons, and who offers some moral guidance as well.

In an age when digital effects have become so common they're not really special any more, Zathura plays on the audience's nostalgia for an older, clunkier era. The board game the boys play, and the rampaging robot that attacks them, look like they could have been made in the '50s, or even the '30s; meanwhile, the Zorgons are not computer-generated models but animatronic puppets designed by Stan Winston (of The Terminator fame).

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