Zathura: A Space Adventure (2005)
Short Review by Stephen Holden: In "Zathura: A Space Adventure," an extraterrestrial fantasy shared by two squabbling young brothers, a cavernous suburban house turns into a rickety spacecraft adrift somewhere in the vicinity of Saturn.
As the house tilts and wobbles through space, it is besieged by meteors, a demented robot and lizardlike creatures called Zorgons. Now and then, its occupants - 6-year-old Danny (Jonah Bobo), 10-year-old Walter (Josh Hutcherson) and their teenage sister, Lisa (Kristen Stewart) - must fight against fierce gravitational forces pulling them toward the void.
The intrusions, including a visit from an abandoned astronaut (Dax Shepard), are conjured by Zathura, a magical board game Danny discovers at the bottom of a dumbwaiter in the house where he and his siblings have moved with their recently divorced father (Tim Robbins).
In the enchanted limbo between waking and sleeping, "Zathura" feels both real and unreal, like a dream you could shake off at any moment.
It doesn't strive for verisimilitude. Even when its computer-generated effects are fancy, they have a homemade quality. The clunky, old-fashioned robot that barges in on the house has the grace and intelligence of a muscle-bound moron. Those Zorgons, creepy heat-seeking carnivores with a taste for human flesh, may be hideous, but they're no great shakes in the brains department.
Summoned by cards drawn by the Zathura players, the robot and the Zorgons wreck a house already riddled by meteors from the shower summoned in the first round of the game. (During the pummeling the boys cringe in the fireplace.) No sooner does Lisa wake up than another round of the game turns her bathroom into a freezer, and she becomes a rigid, frost-covered ice sculpture.
But a house, even one as battered as this, is still a home. Because Danny and Walter remain sheltered, "Zathura" gives its young characters (and the young audience members who will identify with them) the same comforting anchor as "Peter Pan," "Mary Poppins" or "E. T." The movie also richly gratifies the "if only it weren't a game" fantasy of children: not just to play a board game, but to project themselves into its world.
In the game of Zathura, a creaky metallic relic of the 1950's, winding a key activates a metal figure, which marches jerkily along a track and stops at a number, whereupon a card pops up to announce a new fantasy. The movie, adapted from a short, illustrated children's book by Chris Van Allsburg ("Jumanji," "The Polar Express"), is in many ways a sequel to "Jumanji," which also revolved around a board game.
But "Zathura" is gentler, more family-friendly and in every way better than its special-effects-clogged forerunner, which starred Robin Williams and was too scary for many children. In that mean-spirited fantasy, a jungle's worth of terrors, including lions, spiders, carnivorous plants and crocodiles, menaced the characters.
Like other movies adapted from Mr. Van Allsburg's surreal stories, "Zathura" is episodic. It has neither the grand design of the "Harry Potter" movies nor the mythological portent of the "Star Wars" cycle. Jon Favreau, in his first directing assignment since "Elf," shrewdly avoids science-fiction pretentiousness. Except for Mr. Robbins, who disappears early in the film, "Zathura" is without star power. It's left up to the young actors to carry the film, with a hefty assist from Mr. Shepard. (Ms. Stewart's character spends much of the movie cryonically immobilized.)
From the outset, "Zathura" digs into the messier stuff of childhood: fierce sibling rivalry, festering boredom and destructive impulses. The early scenes find the father at his wit's end coping with his sons' fraternal strife. Walter, who is naturally athletic, can catch a baseball; Danny, who is more imaginative, can't.
As they take their turns, and the dangers from outside worsen, the movie becomes an increasingly weighty fable about growing up. Its conventional messages would stick in your craw if pushed too strenuously. But Mr. Favreau and the screenwriters David Koepp and John Kamps refrain from overdoing the preachiness and sentimentality.
In the middle of the game, the brothers realize that to avoid being trapped forever in the game, they must complete it, and that the only way to do that is to cooperate rather than compete; it's easier said than done. Guiding them toward harmony is the astronaut, a glorified Boy Scout who bears a distant resemblance to the young, brash Harrison Ford. As the story takes a final mystical turn that links him to the brothers, the fable clicks into place.
Director: Jon Favreau
Genre: Childrens
Runtime: 1 hr 53 mins
Theatrical Release:Nov 11, 2005
Starring: Josh Hutcherson, Jonah Bobo, Dax Shepard, Kristen Stewart
