Critic Reviews

The film is hyper-aware of the ridiculousness of the patriarchal obsession with masculinity-as-penis-size—and yet, in the end, and rather helplessly, it’s still mired in a banal narrative of masculine self-actualization.

Van Damme’s performance is about the only element left unscathed by the movie’s compulsion to point out its own absurdity.

Director Rob Meltzer, who made the kind-of-amusing meta short "I Am Stamos," directs things in shameless, let's-get-this-thing-over-with style, throwing in some gratuitous topless (female) nudity and allowing the usually amusing Kristen Schaal to let loose with a barrage of potty-mouthisms.

It is difficult to tell whether the filmmakers intended Welcome to the Jungle as a satire or a farce. It is neither funny enough, nor clever enough, to measure up in either case.

The real challenge is for viewers, who must tolerate overacting, idiotic scatological jokes and juvenile innuendo. The only way it might be endurable is if you’re wasted, too.

The story makes 94 minutes seem as long as a season of Lost and as fresh as the seventh viewing of a Gilligan's Island rerun.

Welcome to the Jungle, directed by Rob Meltzer from a script by Jeff Kauffmann, is satanically bad.