Papa Vinyard here, now here's a little somethin' for ya...
I've been very curious about Jean-Claude Van Damme's comedy feature WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE since I first heard about it about a year ago. A few clips and a poster surfaced, but I still had very little idea about what to expect from the Muscles from Brussels' first foray into purely comedic territory. Well, now, we have a trailer, and it looks…kinda okay.
Unsurprisingly, the funniest part about this trailer is JCVD himself. He's obviously gotten to a point where he's comfortable having fun with his image, and it's kinda cool to see him play the super-serious mentor-warrior type for laughs. The bit with the over-exaggerated kick made me laugh; hope there's more of that kinda stuff in the actual movie.
As for the rest of the cast, I like Adam Brody, Rob Huebel, Kristen Schaal, and David Palmer, and they help erase the DTV-esque stink of the rest of the production. The "bottle premise" seems like a convenient way to keep the locations limited and the cast sparse, and very few of the gags have the refinement they'd need to work on a theater audience (although I'll admit, that tiger gag is pretty well executed, if not somewhat predictable). I can't imagine they were shooting this thing knowing 100% that it'd make it into theaters. I mean, it's not like they knew that Van Damme would drop a Volvo commercial that would do more to restore his fame than all of his EXPENDABLES 2 villainy; without that, I have little doubt this would've gone DTV/VOD.
But hey, any Jean-Claude in theaters is fine by me. I'll hold out hope until Outlaw Vern gets his hands on it, at the very least. What do you guys think? Could this be funny, or does low-budget desperation linger over this thing like flies on shit?
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE on February 7th.
-Vincent Zahedi
”Papa Vinyard”
vincentzahedi@gmail.com
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