Roll a Seven, Regret Everything: Jumanji

Episode 15 of Throw the Book. The guys tackle Chris Van Allsburg’s 1981 Caldecott winner Jumanji, a book none of them had read, even though they all knew the movie. It’s a black-and-white picture book where kids get bored, a lion shows up, and nobody ever explains why.

• Peter and Judy play with their toys for about 30 seconds before announcing they’re bored. The panel was never allowed to say that as kids.

• The kids live in a mansion with a train set, a statue, and a grandfather clock, which sends the guys off on couches, Wayfair, and the case against grandfather clocks.

• A completely made-up theory about what the horse’s legs on a statue mean, delivered with total confidence and zero evidence

• A mystery explorer wanders in, ignores everyone, sits on the dollhouse, and is never explained

• Sleeping sickness gets a full, accurate medical explanation, to the horror of everyone who just wanted to talk about a rhino

• Every square on the board is either bad or neutral, so the panel’s strategy guide is “just speed-run it”

• A clock-continuity investigation that ends with a perfect-score argument

• The ending: the kids put the cursed game back under the tree for the next family. The panel compares it to returning a haunted object to the library.

• Reviews that include a one-star that praises the book and then rates it one star, and a one-star complaint about the movie’s 4K transfer

• An AI-generated Jumanji theme song with a bagpipe solo that you can’t unhear

Scores landed between a flat six out of six and “the same thing happened three times, then the book ended.” Then we bumped the average anyway.

Next up: Room on the Broom.

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