Van Damme delivers punchy action comedy
The new Amazon series “Jean-Claude Van Johnson” teeters somewhere between its absurd self-referential concept and an amusing offbeat action flick.
In the six-part show, global martial-arts film star JeanClaude Van Damme plays “JeanClaude Van Damme,” a global martial-arts film star. The fictional Jean-Claude lives in retirement, puttering around his estate. One night he spots his former lover, Vanessa (Kat Foster),an undercover spy. So, too,was JeanClaude, only he worked under the name Van Johnson.
He reconnects with his old contacts and is assigned to go undercover on an action movie set in Bulgaria, ostensibly to take down some drug kingpins, but really it’s to get next to Vanessa, who works as a hairdresser on the film.
She goes along, not entirely unhappy about the development. The film is a kung-fu remake of “Huckleberry Finn,” in which Jean-Claude is Huck, whose lover, Tom, is played by a woman, in a story about defeating the Confederacy.
While on a mission JeanClaude runs across a maintenance man, Philip, who looks like him (also Van Damme). JeanClaude tells him the plot of 1994’s “Timecop” to explain the situation. The bad guys discover the resemblance and set Philip up as a look-alike.
It isn’t long before the spy reality and the movie reality overlap, particularly when some baddies come after Van Damme. Thinking he’s capturing great fight scenes, the director is ecstatic. When his assistant points out that automatic weapons weren’t used in the 1850s, the director tells her no one cares.
Show from the left are, Moises Arias as Luis, Jean-Claude Van Damme as Jean-Claude Van Damme/Johnson and Kat Foster as Vanessa in “JeanClaude Van Johnson.”
The meta-concept for “JeanClaude Van Johnson” is from Dave Callaham, the creator and showrunner. The action hero known as the Muscles from Brussels still has a kick and seems to enjoy spoofing his image.
At six episodes, the series has enough drive to sustain it,throwing in outlandish gags and a scheme to take over the world.
The series has a “True Lies” feel. Van Damme, though, is a different action figure,with more self-doubt and regret than usually seen in the movies. But the series smartly never takes itself too seriously. JEAN-CLAUDE VAN JOHNSON What:
Six-episodeactionspoof, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme Available now Amazon
When: Where: