The writers made the DIRE mistake of thinking that the audience would be interested in the backstory of the characters. spoiler alert: WE AREN'T! We don't care about the characters' backstory; we only care about the action, the occasional jokes and the game of Jumanji. If the movie spent less time on the needless dialogue between the characters trying to make the audience 'care' about the characters, and MORE time on the action and jokes in the movie, then this movie would have easily been a 7 or even an 8 out of 10 like the first Jumanji was.