The Jumanji video game makes a lot more sense than its board game precursor.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle revisits the basic storyline of the 1995 movie starring Robin Williams and a young Kirsten Dunst. But now, rather than aimlessly rolling dice and being randomly menaced by a variety of real and imagined jungle creatures that manifest in the real world, a group of teens are transported into a video-game jungle where they must beat the game to get out.

Unfortunately for one of them, it takes 20 years to best the challenge.

The movie begins in 1996, when Alex (Mason Guccione) receives the original Jumanji board game from his father, who found it on a beach. But the teenager isn't interested in the old-style game, so overnight it transforms itself into a video game. And, like Robin Williams before him, he's trapped in the game for years after failing to win.

Flash forward to the present day. An unlikely quartet of high school students gathers, Breakfast Club-style, in detention, where they find the abandoned game and decide to play it to stave off the boredom of their assigned chores. There's the nerd Spencer (Alex Wolff), shy girl Martha (Morgan Turner), jock Fridge (Ser'Darius Blain) and popular girl Bethany (Madison Iseman). But, once they choose characters on the start-up screen, they're sucked into the console and become their avatars: Spencer is now the heroic leader (Dwayne Johnson), Martha is the martial artist in Lara Croft-like jungle attire (Karen Gillan), Fridge is the diminutive guy with the weapons bag (Kevin Hart) and Bethany is the portly cartographer (Jack Black).

The game begins, and they quickly learn (after Bethany is eaten by a hippopotamus and Martha is shot by a jungle motorcycle gang) that they each have three lives, so they need to solve the puzzle quickly. Along the way, they find Alex (now Nick Jonas), who has no idea he's been in the game so long.

The sequel works so well in part because they give the game a sense of purpose -- an objective that ends the game, rather than a simple roll of the dice. Even better is the great ensemble work of Johnson, Gillan, Hart and Black, who are wonderful playing people who don't know their own bodies. Welcome to the Jungle is a lot of fun.