At this one point, reviewing the new Jackass movie is like reviewing the new Marvel movie or new Fast & Furious movie. You basically know exactly what you’re gonna get out of it and it’s foolish to expect anything else otherwise. Johnny Knoxville and crew know exactly what they want to do to entertain their audience and the exact kind of demographic they are aiming for. A target demographic that ranges from pre-teens, which constantly have their mind blown over seeing shit they might still be too young to realize they shouldn’t try it at home, to the young adults, who have matured and are now clever enough to know not to try any of this shit at home. You’re either on board the Jackass train or not! As for me, when watching Jackass Forever, it didn’t so much want to make me jump aboard the train but want to play the part as the bystander waving at the train once it goes by with the realization that train can possibly crash at any giving moment.
When it comes to the Jackass series, I believe this is a franchise that tends to work best in small doses. While the idea of having a group of bozos having the time of their live pulling pranks and trying out dangerously stupid stunts might make for a solid web series or 11-15 minute long episodes, I don’t think they can translate well to films. There’s only so much time you can engage your audience by basically committing acts of torture porn over and over again until it’s no longer funny, cringe, shocking, or even simply Jackass. That was what I thought until I watched Bad Grandpa.
Bad Grandpa not only was that rare installment in a stunt heavy franchise that manages to be engaging and fresh with all of it’s stunts and pranks all the way through but also told an entertaining story in the process. We basically see a fun but mean-spirited Grandpa take his grandson for the most care-free time of his life, showing how even adults can have the brain and heart of a child. The drama (if you even called it that) was nothing special and probably would fail if the movie was meant to to be taken seriously but it’s not suppose to. It’s for those reasons why that movie was able to succeed on its own merits and make it worthwhile as a feature film. (And good lord, is Johnny Knoxville completely fabulous and unrecognizable as Grandpa Irving Zisman.)
Jackass Forever doesn’t try to be the kind of thing that Bad Grandpa was. There’s no actual storyline or characters that come into play, it’s basically just Johnny Knoxville and his buddies performing the most insane, bat shit crazy stunts that they could possibly imagine, with a good majority of it having to do with a guy having his dick and/or balls tortured repeatedly. There are some clever ones scattered throughout with the standouts being the lights out scene, the spider bit, and the one with the bear that had me chuckling when it happens. But for the most part, it’s just guys playing around and hurting their own John Henrys and nut sacks constantly. It’s gloriously excessive sure but it didn’t so much make me feel bad for the stunt people but rather made me think that they took too much soccer balls to the head to keep doing this stuff. (Btw, that annoying “Concussions are cool as long as you get them before you’re 50!” line from the trailer is no where to be found in the movie. Thanks goodness!)
For a franchise like this, having a big collection of stunts/pranks/games as a movie isn’t necessarily a bad thing and to it’s credit, it’s paced rather well and is only 96 minutes. But as I’ve said before, there’s only so much you can do with a bare minimum concept before it loses it’s appeal entirely. To quote a legendary super villain, “When every scene is Jackass, NO scene is Jackass!”
Don’t take this review personally or as a negative one! I had a good enough time with Jackass Forever but I honestly wonder if I would have just as much the same experience with it had I just typed up and marathoned the best stunts of Jackass on YouTube instead of paying (I actually have Regal Unlimited but still) to go see a movie’s worth of it in theaters. I will say the opening and ending sequences are strong along with a handful of bits in between that I already mentioned but by the end, Johnny and his gang are still the same and haven’t changed one bit. Everything is Jackass and I mean that in more ways than one!
Adam's Blog 