Welcome to the Jungle

Directed by Rob Meltzer, Welcome to the Jungle follows several coworkers, including Adam Brody’s Chris, Megan Boone’s Lisa, and Rob Huebel’s Phil) as they find themselves stranded on a remote island during a team-building exercise. It’s a fun premise that’s squandered virtually from the word go by Meltzer, as the filmmaker, armed with a script by Jeff Kauffmann, delivers a sluggish and hopelessly bland endeavor that contains little in the way of laughs or ingratiating attributes – with Jean-Claude Van Damme’s woefully small (yet thoroughly amusing) turn as the tough-as-nails figure leading said team-building exercise standing as the picture’s sole wholeheartedly entertaining attribute. And as underwhelming as the picture is within its opening stretch, Welcome to the Jungle takes a serious nosedive into unwatchable territory as it progresses into an often infuriatingly misguided (and flat-out interminable) midsection focused on the eye-rollingly silly island power games – which does, in the end, cement the film’s place as a completely wrongheaded disaster that might’ve worked as a short (but probably not).

* out of ****