THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 14, 1995 TAG: 9512140039
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 117 lines
IN ``JUMANJI,'' Robin Williams wrestles a crocodile.
It plays like Indiana Jones time - not raucous, fun-time, wacky Robin Williams territory.
``Was it a real crocodile?'' Williams counters the question, in seeming disbelief. ``Do I look like a guy who wouldn't wrestle with a real crocodile? To put it frankly, the thing was ONCE a real crocodile. It was like wrestling a giant suitcase.''
``Still,'' he shouted, getting louder by the moment, ``you have to work from the premise that if you get your hands caught in there, you won't get your fingers back. You should believe that. I betcha didn't. Did you? I didn't, as in did NOT, use a stunt double.''
``Jumanji,'' with a whopping price tag of $65 million, is aimed at children. Williams' fans may be a bit surprised that his character is not particularly funny. He plays a guy trapped for 26 years inside a board game. When he is set free, after surviving in the cardboard jungles all that time, he faces a new, civilized world he has never known.
``I'm still like a child, but I wear this jungle stuff and I'm a survivor,'' he explained. ``I've learned to survive in the jungle but not in the outside world. It's not Peter Pan. I'm like a child, emotionally, but not Peter Pan.''
The special effects wizards were kept busy recreating the other escapees from the board game: rhinos, elephants and zebras stampeding through the living room, a growling lion in the hallway, a raging river blasting through the kitchen. ``Children are going to like it,'' Williams beamed, ``but, most of all, for me, it's surely the closest I'll ever come to doing an action movie.''
Robin might have a hairy chest, but he isn't usually considered for serious roles involving danger.
He admits that he never even sought action roles - at least not the conventional ones. ``You might say even `The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' was a family movie,'' he said. ``It depends on the family, but I'm not comfortable about blowing someone away and then making a joke about it.''
Based on the 1981 children's book by Chris Van Allsburg, ``Jumanji'' had been talked about for movie adaptation for years. The author, though, turned down all offers, until now.
Williams, who wants to have more time to stay at home in San Francisco, was interested in the project for two reasons.
``I wanted to do something that would make my children laugh,'' he said ``I wanted to be in a movie they could see. They wonder where I go all day. I wanted to be able to show them the movie I made. I had been the voice of the genie in `Aladdin' and I wanted to do something else. Kids get embarrassed about what parents want them to see. I think kids will think this one is cool.''
Robin's kids are ages 12, 6 and 4. ``Actually,'' he added, ``I don't think kids under 4 should see it. It's a little intense. We've done test screenings of it and the littlest kids climbed on their father's lap.''
To most of the world Robin Williams is a man-child.
Nominated for three Oscars (``Good Morning, Vietnam,'' ``Dead Poet's Society'' and ``The Fisher King''), he's still not, by any means, taken seriously by his fans. Last seen in drag, in the hit ``Mrs. Doubtfire'' (a role he describes as ``Margaret Thatcher on steroids''), he'll next be seen as one-half of a gay love affair in ``The Birdcage'' directed by Mike Nichols. ``It's just like a heterosexual relationship,'' he said,``but I'm the Butch one. I've already done drag. Shaving my body was, uh, shall we say unpleasant?''
But, another, unexpected aspect that attracted him to ``Jumanji.'' The plot, what little there is of it, has Williams having trouble with his relationship with his father. He was zapped into the land of Jumanji back in 1969, at age 12. Now, at age 38, he's a survivor. Williams identifies with the child who was alone. An interview with him is usually a wild, out-of-control experience. This time, for moments at a time, he's somber, and he's painting a side of Robin Williams we seldom see: the sad, lonely, rich boy who used comedy to survive.
``My dad would go away,'' he said, putting it succinctly. ``I was always scared he wouldn't come back. I'd make up elaborate stories about where he was - that he was away in China doing missionary work or involved in some big adventure.'' Actually, his father was a top-ranking official for the Lincoln-Mercury division of Ford Motors.
``The wonderful thing is that I, finally, got to know him, near the end,'' Williams said. ``I was in my 30s when he died - eight years ago.''
It was comedy, he explains, that ``brought me out of the shadows, when I got to college. I started doing improvisations with this group. I felt it was really empowering.''
His first co-educational school (senior year in high school) was a revelation. ``It wasn't exactly like a vision in a cathedral, but close,'' he said. ``In a co-educational school, suddenly something snapped. I failed political science, but I joined this improvisational theater class and learned that it was so much fun.''
You might say that breaking out of the ``Jumanji'' game was a little like Williams breaking into the world of comedy. His life, and the movies, have never been quite the same.
A mad man was born. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
COLUMBIA/TRISTAR
A stampede of wild animals - created entirely by computer -
demolishes a car in an action sequence from ``Jumanji,'' opening
Friday.
AT RIGHT, FROM TOP:
Robin Williams with ``Jumanji'' co-stars Bonnie Hunt, Bradley Pierce
and Kirsten Dunst; Williams trapped in an attic floor turned
quicksand; confronting a giant pelican.
Photo
TRISTAR
Robin Williams escapes the confines of a board game after 26 years
in ``Jumanji.''
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