From the late-80-'s to the mid-90's, Jean-Claude Van Damme was
a box office draw who was able to knock out the competition with a swift
roundhouse kick. However, his clout slowly started to fizzle away until he fell
into the almost inescapable limbo of the direct-to-video market. Lately, he's
been stretching those muscles from Brussels in an effort to regain his
relevance. Van Damme played himself in the reflexive JCVD, which earned him critical praise and was his first theatrical
release in almost a decade. He had a really enjoyable turn as the subtly named
Jean Vilain in The Expendables 2.
Even some of his recent DTV projects have been out of his comfort zone. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning was
a dark and bizarre take on the franchise that was more akin to David Cronenberg
or Gaspar Noé.
Van Damme has never really tried his hand at comedy before,
aside from a brief cameo in Last Action
Hero and the unintentional laughs of the much-maligned Street Fighter. This time around, Van Damme does the splits and dives
deep into the genre with Welcome to the
Jungle, which has aspirations at being Office
Space with a dash of Lord of the
Flies.
Adam Brody is Chris, a timid graphic designer at a big
advertising firm where he's constantly pushed around by the odious Phil (Rob
Huebel). Phil steals one of Chris's designs for a toilet paper campaign, yet
the poor kid still can't muster up the courage to stand up for himself.
Meanwhile, their incompetent boss, Mr. Crawford (Dennis Haysbert), won't do
anything about it. Instead, he announces that all employees will take part in a
team-building exercise on a remote island under the supervision of Navy Seal
Storm Rothchild. The trip goes terribly wrong when the pilot is found dead and
Rothchild is mauled by a tiger.
These white collar goofs are completely clueless until Chris
teaches them survival skills he learned as a Boy Scout. Phil grows insanely jealous
of Chris suddenly becoming the new alpha male and begins undermining all his
orders. Using a hallucinogenic weed, Phil turns nearly everyone into an
obedient savage with himself as their god. Chris escapes along with a small
group consisting of best friend Jared (Eric Edelstein), the rabbit-obsessed
Brenda (Kristen Schaal), and Lisa (Megan Boone from NBC's The Blacklist), the pretty girl from HR that Chris has long had a
crush on.
Van Damme takes center stage in the posters and cover art in
spite of his relatively small role. It's still justified as JCVD happens to be
the only entertaining part of the movie as he pokes fun at his own tough guy
image. Outside of Van Damme, Welcome to
the Jungle labors to elicit a single chuckle or smirk in its thankfully
brief 95 minute runtime. It desperately grasps for humor with repetitive and
lazy jokes about gays and masturbation. All the characters are cartoons with
the exception of Chris and Lisa, who are about as white bread as can be.
The Rundown,
starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Seann William Scott, was
previously titled Welcome to the Jungle.
I only point this out because that is a far better film than this painfully
dull attempt at comedy. You could also do better by listening to the Guns 'N'
Roses song over and over for an hour and a half.
Rating: * (*****)
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