Having been so successfully welcomed to the jungle in Jack Kasdan’s 2017 Jumanji revival, audiences must surely have higher expectations for the director’s second stab. Lower them a tad and you’re there.

Running with the ongoing indestructibility of the titular board game as raison d’etre enough, the film opens to Alex Wolff’s Spencer repairing the remains of that old Jumanji console. Whilst his fire-forged friends have maintained connectivity, Spencer has drifted from the group, driven by social anxiety that couldn’t quite be beaten last time around.

Most aggrieved by the fracture is girlfriend Martha (Morgan Turner) but buff Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain) and back packing popular Bethany (Madison Iseman) share concern. When Spencer skips brunch at a local cafe, the threesome head round to his. With Spencer already zapped to Jumanji, it’s his grouch of a grandpa Eddie (Danny DeVito, always good value) waiting, plus his estranged buddy Milo (Danny Glover).

And here’s the twist: when Martha, Fridge and Bethany volunteer to go after their friend, the game brings the old folk along for the ride too.

New additions aside, The Next Level fairly rigidly reprises the previous film’s formula. Arrival in Jumanji again kicks off with exposition from chummy explorer Nigel (Rhys Darby), this time revealing that the recovery of some shiny MacGuffin is the group’s only means of escape.

Next is a blackly comic reminder of the rules - three lives and you’re out - before the quest kicks off with some hearty action and ample running. One by one, lives are picked off inconsequentially, building to the inevitable realisation that they’re all on strike three.

This isn’t the sort of film in which threat to life ever feels genuine but the tattoo battery bars remain a novel idea and a handful of the film’s best gags come from the creative way characters are stripped of them.

Oddly, the body switching struggles to catch light as before. Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart give their best at impersonating DeVito and Glover but miss almost every comic beat.New to the game, Awkwafina feels as wasted as Glover and DeVito until she gets a go at imitating the latter and thoroughly nails it. Likeable but only okay.