Movies - TV
Robin Williams Had Two Very Personal Reasons For Deciding To Make Jumanji
By SANDY SCHAEFER
Inspired by Chris Van Allsburg’s 1981 picture book of the same name, “Jumanji” follows the story of Alan Parrish, a boy that gets trapped inside a magical board game for 26 years and emerges as a full-grown man. The film’s star, Robin Williams, felt a deep connection to the movie and Alan’s story as it reminded him of his own life, according to Dave Itzkoff’s “Robin,” a biography of the actor.
Alan is born into a wealthy life in the story, but the character lives a lonely childhood as he is bullied at school and has difficulty connecting with his father on an emotional level — it’s only once he is free that he discovers the lengths his parents took to find him. According to Itzkoff’s book, Alan’s backstory reminded Williams of his own “lonely, mansion-bound childhood in Bloomfield Hills.”
Williams also felt this film was the only responsible action movie for him to be making at the time. Williams said, “The world frightens me a lot, the world as it exists. This is an action movie, it has a certain type of violence, but I can’t do a movie where all of a sudden I’ll blow things away and make a joke about it. Because we live in a world where that’s a reality."