5.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A company retreat on a tropical island goes terribly awry.
Starring: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Adam Brody, Rob Huebel, Megan Boone, Kristen SchaalComedy | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Spanish: DTS 5.1
French: DTS 5.1
Italian: DTS 5.1
Thai: DTS 5.1
Castilian and Latin Spanish
English SDH, French, Spanish, Cantonese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Icelandic, Italian, Korean, Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Swedish, Thai
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
UV digital copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
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.)
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'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.
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.
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.
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