In most cases, I’d say no. If I’ve seen it before, I probably won’t bother. I like Jumaji, it was a lot of fun to watch. So, if I’m being handed Jumanji in space sans Robin Williams, it doesn’t seem too appealing. In fact, it seems downright lazy, just think up a new board game and recycle.

The thing is, Zathura is worth watching. And it’s a fun movie to watch.

Alright, so we’re working with the same basic premise, kids discover a board game, and as they play it, the events in the game start happening in real life. But this time, instead of the jungle coming to the living room, the house goes into space.

Despite it being set in space with aliens and meteors and robots, this is not a science fiction film. It is a fantasy. So don’t waste your time trying to figure out the logic behind the physics in the film. I spent a long time trying to figure out the rules that governed oxygen in the movie. For example, in one scene they worry about running out of oxygen, but then their house is torn apart and they aren’t all running out of air, either. Then I was wondering about fire in space. Since there’s no oxygen in space, and they throw something that’s on fire out into space, you’d think the fire would go out. It didn’t and the characters leap to other space ships, open and close doors on space, wear or don’t wear oxygen masks, and it all didn’t matter. It’s something that we’re supposed to take for granted. If you can believe that the board game can get all this stuff to happen, then I guess you’re better off not worrying about physics.

Speaking of weird concepts, there’s also this weird temporal displacement (time travel) sequence, that hearkens to Back to the Future and meeting future selves that doesn’t really seem to make any sense. But then things happen so quick that you don’t really have much time to think about it.

That’s a big reason why Zathura works. It grabs you, and like the characters in the story, you’re thrown into this chaos, all manner of things happening, and you barely even have time to react to one thing before another starts happening.

At the forefront of the movie is the story of two bickering young brothers, and how they have to overcome their differences to finish the game and get back home. It’s nice family movie stuff, but it’s well acted and you don’t find the things the kids do obnoxious, but, rather, if you had a younger brother you’d know just what they are going through. One may get a bit weary with the family issues, though, as the family portrayed seems to be one of those with badly disciplined American kids who don’t really show much respect for their parents or each other.

Zathura is an effects bonanza, as it plays up the space motif by throwing in space ships, aliens, a killer robot, a house that’s all but blown up, and heck, even the kitchen sink. It’s exciting, and there’s a lot of eye candy to be enjoyed.

There’s nothing much that’s new in this movie. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t entertaining. It’s a fun trip to space, and as a kid flick it offers just that right amount of moral lesson wrapped in a big wad of action and adventure.