Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Welcome to the Jungle Blu-ray Movie Review

Lord of the Dweebs

Reviewed by Michael Reuben May 3, 2014

No one plays Jean-Claude Van Damme better than Jean-Claude Van Damme. In JCVD, he got his best notices in years as an alternate version of himself beset by personal and professional problems and unexpectedly yanked into a bank heist that played like one of his earlier films. Now, in the little seen and unfairly slammed Welcome to the Jungle, he parodies himself as a former military man turned corporate "team builder"—and steals the movie from experienced comic actors like Adam Brody (The O.C.), Rob Huebel (Adult Swim's Children's Hospital) and Kristen Schaal (30 Rock). The script by first-time screenwriter Jeff Kauffmann (no relation to Blu-ray.com's reviewer) wanders in the film's second half, and director Rob Meltzer should have relied less on easy laughs from cursing and bathroom humor. But largely thanks to Van Damme, Welcome to the Jungle packs a few surprises into its tight running time, and that is a rare thing in a mainstream R-rated comedy. (Technically, the film has no rating, but R is certainly what it would have received, possibly with a few trims for language.)

The initial "jungle" in Meltzer's film is a small ad agency specializing in package design run by CEO Crawford (Dennis Haysbert, slumming and clearly enjoying it). The senior VP is a sleazebag named Phil (Huebel) who, besides being a sexual harassment lawsuit waiting to happen, also steals ideas from younger, more talented colleagues like Chris (Brody). Chris's best friend in the office, the disheveled IT guy, Jared (Eric Edelstein), keeps encouraging Chris to stand up to Phil, but Chris is too much of a nice guy to do so—or to declare his interest in the beautiful Lisa (Megan Boone) from Human Resources. And who is Jared to talk? A big guy himself, he freezes in fear before the diminutive Brenda (Schaal), his on-again, off-again girlfriend, whose wrath cannot be appeased. The couple's problems are many, but a big one is Jared's sense that he comes second to Brenda's menagerie of pet rabbits, whose pictures fill her cubicle.

Mr. Crawford doesn't sense enough entrepreneurial spirit in the office; so he packs off everyone (other than himself) for a two-day team building excursion in a real jungle lead by Storm Rothchild (Van Damme), an ex-SEAL with a thousand-yard stare and a bullying demeanor, who promises the staff an experience they'll never forget. After a death-defying flight to an uncharted island in a prop-engine plane that looks like it couldn't pass an FAA inspection (to say nothing of the pilot), he sits them around a campfire and reminds them of a story that sounds a lot like Lord of the Flies. It turns out not to be, but I won't spoil the punchline. Before long, unforeseen developments have stranded the group on the island, where they begin playing out the classic William Golding tale. Phil, who has always wanted to be a god, proclaims himself one, and most of the company staff follow him, inspired by the hallucinogenic Jimson weed that grows wild on the island. It's left to Chris, Lisa, Jared and Brenda to remain voices of reason and figure out a rescue plan—if Phil's followers don't find and kill them first.

As civilization breaks down on the island, so does Kauffmann's script, which devolves into a series of sketches and situations that gradually lead us to the inevitable happy ending. (It is a comedy, after all.) On the one side, we have the ludicrous antics of Phil and his servile followers. On the other, there's the bickering of the four renegades, and since democracy is messier than dictatorship, there's plenty of conflict. (An extended, hackneyed routine is devoted to Brenda's sudden embrace of the joys of foul language, after a futile career as the office scold.) Unfortunately, this is the portion of the film that needs more discipline, not less, because Meltzer has a lot of ground to cover as efficiently as possible. He has to arrange the rescue, which involves Jared using his tech skills to cobble together a radio from spare parts; stage a showdown between Chris and Phil; and develop the love story between Chris and Lisa. Meltzer gets the job done and some scenes are hilarious, but just as many fall flat and should have been cut or restaged. When comedy starts to drag, the laughs turn to chuckles and eventually to silence.

The alert reader will have noticed that I haven't mentioned how Storm Rothchild figures into all of this, which is deliberate, because I don't want to spoil anything. Suffice it to say that, whenever Van Damme is around, no matter what he's doing—and he does some pretty wild stuff—he'll be the one you're watching.

Welcome to the Jungle Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Welcome to the Jungle was shot on the Red Epic by Eric Haåse, whose principle experience has been in commercials and television; the film was completed on a digital intermediate. Universal's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, presumably sourced from digital files, shows the usual visual characteristics of films that have progressed on a continuously digital path from origination through post-production to finished product: a clean, sharp, detailed image free of analog interference; precisely delineated colors without noise or bleeding; and the innately HDTV look that is so beloved by recent Blu-ray converts.

The film uses two different color palettes. Colder, less saturated tones dominate the office environment, but the island scenes (shot mostly in Puerto Rico) are lush with greens, oranges and the deep blue of the ocean. Even the nightimes scenes, which feature deep blacks, have bright flashes of color.

Although Red footage has been shown to compress well, Universal has chosen to utilize most of the space available on a BD-50 to achieve a generous average bitrate of 35.997 Mbps, thereby eliminating any risk of artifacts. Whatever other mistakes it may have made, Universal should be acknowledged for not following Warner's practice of aiming for the tighest possible compression, even when it means leaving almost half of the available space unused.

Welcome to the Jungle Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Welcome to the Jungle's 5.1 soundtrack, presented on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA, is relatively restrained in the office environment, but it opens up with the harrowing plane flight that bounces Crawford's employees from one side of the cabin to the other. After their arrival, there are the buzz of insects, the calls of birds, other unidentifiable jungle sounds, the roar of surf, blazing campfires, thundering drums (some of them added by the musical score) and a number of other sounds best left for the viewer to discover. The rear speakers don't specifically call attention to themselves, but they contribute to the sense of being enveloped in an alien environment.

The dialogue is generally clear, except for Van Damme, who admits in an interview in the extras that he's not good with dialogue, and the score by Karl Preusser, for whom this is the first high-profile assignment, strikes the right note for an action comedy.

Welcome to the Jungle Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Universal's menu for Welcome to the Jungle uses a format I haven't encountered previously, although for all I know it is now standard on new films. When the disc first loads, you are asked to make a language selection. The main menu then loads with the kind of "international" symbols for "play", "subtitles", etc. that are supposed to be self-explanatory and frequently are not. See screenshot # 22.

• Behind the Scenes (1080i; 1.78:1; 59:13): This lengthy (maybe too lengthy) documentary contains interviews with the principal cast, director Meltzer and producer Justin Kanew on location in Puerto Rico, as well as behind-the-scenes footage filming a key sequence and transforming Rob Huebel into his island god alter ego.



• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 2.39:1; 1:25): Listed in the plural on the menu, the item contains only one scene, an extended version of the trek by Chris, Lisa, Jared and Brenda through the jungle.

Welcome to the Jungle Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Welcome to the Jungle is uneven, but any fan of Van Damme should enjoy his performance here, which is vanity-free and slyly self-mocking. The film could have used more of him and less of some of the other cast. (Rob Huebel's shtick quickly wears out its welcome.) Adam Scott and Megan Boone make a credible romantic couple, even if it does take far too long for them to get together, and the Puerto Rican locations are gorgeous. One could do a lot worse, and modern Hollywood has done so far too often. Mildly recommended.