This is another of those films where a 30-minute documentary on how they did the special effects would be a lot more interesting (not to mention a lot shorter) than the movie itself. The digital effects and animatronics are great; the screenplay doesn't work. A complicated narrative set-up (which keeps the star, Robin Williams, off screen for the first half-hour) is followed by an hour of screaming and running around which doesn't develop much of anything. The big problem isn't hard to pinpoint: The movie has no real antagonist _ no villain. The supernatural board game of the title not only doesn't have a personality (it is, after all, only a board game), it doesn't have an intelligible plan. We find out nothing about how or why it exists. It's just a sort of random hazard generator. The four main characters survive the hazards just long enough, the game ends _ end of movie. The pasted-on homilies the screenplay comes up with _ the need for courage, commitment, real parent-child communication _ are drowned out in the hubbub, and a good cast (not to mention a big budget) is wasted. And they're planning a sequel to THIS? Have they run out of good (or even mediocre) films to do sequels to?
