22 years after the release of Jumanji, starring the late Robin Williams, Columbia Pictures has finally released a sequel to the hit 1995 film, delivering incredible starpower and twisting the premise around, having the players going inside a video game, rather than characters from a board game going into the real world. And while the cast do help make the film more entertaining, they are still forced to deal with a screenplay home to unfunny jokes, and cliched plot lines and characters.

The major selling point for this film is the cast, including Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, and Karen Gillan as its leads, the video game avatars chosen by an eclectic group of teenagers, with the nerd turned into Johnson, the jock into Hart, the popular girl into Black, and the wallflower into Gillan. The four are all entertaining, with Hart doing his expected routine, which still generates solid laughs, and Johnson playing a bit against type by having him play a scrawny nerd in a buff body, and Johnson’s able to deliver a few enjoyable gags with that contrast. The two standouts from the main ensemble though come to Karen Gillan and Jack Black. Gillan is more or less the straight woman of the team, but it’s her reactions to the crazy world and characters she surrounds herself with that makes her entertaining. Jack Black portraying a stereotypical teenage girl sounds like a schtick that would quickly get old, but what makes it work is Black’s commitment to the idea. He plays around with all of the different cliches and tropes found with the idea, and goes all out, and even pitches his voice higher to help deliver some lines that could have been throwaway by any other actor into total knee-slappers. His chemistry with Gillan is also fantastic, as both of them have great back-and-forths, develop a really strong relationship, and deliver some of the best and most hilarious sequences in the film.

And while the cast does deserve a lot of kudos, they sadly still can’t save a generic script. The characters are fairly one-note and stereotypical, and while it is entertaining to see the avatars pull off these archetypes, the actual teens themselves leave something to be desired. While the acting could have been far worse, none of the teens are able to pull off the same comedic timing and entertainment that Johnson or Black deliver, leading to a largely dull and unfunny beginning ripe with annoying cliches and eye-roll gags. When the game finally happens, the humor does pick up, but not every joke is a slam dunk. While the film promises a clever takedown of video game tropes and conventions, like the hyper-sexualized women, and jokes about NPCs and cutscenes, the film slowly shies away from the idea, and devolves into lame sequences of running around and largely forgettable gags, with a surprisingly high amount of penis jokes. Although there are still plenty of humorous moments, mostly thanks to Jack Black and Karen Gillan, the film still doesn’t quite land a good chunk of the time. It also doesn’t help that the rest of the story fails to deliver anything truly exciting or engaging, as Bobby Cannavale as the antagonist is completely forgettable, failing to be funny, intimidating, or even interesting, the third act is pretty generic, and a romance subplot is forced in for the sake of it.

There are still a good few bits of clever writing in. Again, a couple of the gags work, the main actors fire on all cylinders, and there are a few clever callbacks and nods to the 1995 film. And for a random property that had little to no clamoring from a continuation from audiences, the product could have been a lot worse. But as is, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a largely forgettable adventure comedy that offers little to the imagination and in spite of a unique setting, fails to capitalize on the idea. But with the film’s massive box office success, as it nears $900 million worldwide, a sequel is already in development, so can only hope director Jake Kasdan can improve on his previous work once it releases.