I honestly don't understand all the hype and high scores and positive reviews on this movie.

To start off, the 20yo "high school students" are nowhere near believable, but at the same time they're such stereotypes-on-legs that one feels the urge to just punch them in the face. Not only their personalities, but their every single interaction as well is so sterotypical and predictable that they're literally painful to watch.

Once they get into the game, it doesn't get any better. The fact that they're sucked into a game only serves to negate any and all sense of danger they may face during the "adventure": with three lives, you just know that whatever happens to them will have no consequence whatsoever - if anything, they manage to utilise "death" as a game mechanic to help them along the way; heck even their weaknesses become strengths, if not just butts of jokes. Their transformation only goes the most predictable way too: turning into their own "inverse" versions, with one or two character traits preserved to make everything else about them a joke. The world itself is poorly utilised as well: the source of the main dangers isn't nature but bandits on motorcycles, with some bad CGI animals only occasionally getting in their way. Even the story is non-existent, with a huge timeskip after a short intro, because gods forbid they actually continue where it was left off, or just bring it to present days right from the start.

The actors at least try to make an effort to do something with their characters, but quite frankly the ensemble of a muscle-brained G.I. Joe, a middle-aged unkempt Indiana Jones, a black valet, and Lara Croft has too little originality to it (ie. none) for those efforts to make much of a difference. Not to even mention the pilot, who couldn't be more generic if he was actually cut out of cardboard. But hey, at least Jack Black gets to play a teenage girl.

I'm not sure who felt that making this movie was needed. I'm not sure who thinks walking clichés and d××k jokes constitute a "fun family movie". Take away the title, and there is quite literally nothing to see here that stands out from any similar "lower tier" flick - none of which ever gets this ridiculously overrated.