Welcome to the Jungle abandons the physical board game shell of the original and upgrades it for a NES-esque game cartridge that operates like contemporary video games, a la Uncharted and Far Cry. This makes for a bit of a refreshing vitalization to the film's premise, but also serves as one of its major plot holes. The game just appears in the sand, and then magically turns itself from board game to game cartridge without any explanation. As if that weren't confounding enough, our four central clichés—err, I mean characters—stumble upon this game cartridge and system in the basement of their high school while serving time in detention. Before this chance encounter, the last place we saw the cartridge was in a kid's house. I find it hard to believe that a grieving parent would give the game system and game away to the school of all places. This hole in logical is never addressed, and is just there to get us out of the clichéd high school into the subversion of stereotypes that the games and jungle brings with it.

Just like a video game, the film's narrative is a bit weak in the ways of character development, especially at the beginning. The treacherous jungle terrain of the film's game relies on petty obstacles and chases to function as its primary driving force. A lot of the conflict stems from the group learning to put aside their differences and work together, but other than that, they're not met with much resistance from the bad guys. The Rock mows through everyone with graceful ease and never once finds his match, even when it comes down to facing off against the villain played by Bobby Cannavale, who is extremely underutilized. Cannavale is the weakest drawn character, coming off like a wannabe Marvel baddie, but what he lacks in character he makes up in being creepy as hell. Still, no matter what he tries throws at our heroes, they're never really slowed or even remotely hindered, which makes the action and thrills a little less exciting.