Director: Jeff Tremaine.
Starring: Johhny Knoxville, Jackson Nicholl.
Running Time: 92 minutes.
Certificate: 12A.
Synopsis: 86 year-old Irving Zisman is on a journey across America with the most unlikely companion, his 8 year-old Grandson Billy.Along the way Irving will introduce the young and impressionable Billy to people, places and situations that give new meaning to the term childrearing. The duo will encounter male strippers, disgruntled child beauty pageant contestants (and their equally disgruntled mothers), funeral home mourners, biker bar patrons and a whole lot of unsuspecting citizens.
You may have correctly presumed from this release’s full title that BAD GRANDPA comes from MTV Films and the minds of the folks that brought us the Jackass TV series and subsequent movies. The story revolves the character of Johnny Knoxville’s Irving Zisman, an 86-year-old who must embark on a cross-country trip to unite his grandson Billy, played by Jackson Nicoll, with his father after his mother is locked up on drug charges. In true Jackass style, the narrative is constructed using hidden camera pranks and stunts as only Knoxville, and fellow writers Spike Jonze and Jeff Tremaine, who also directs, can deliver.
JACKASS PRESENTS: BAD GRANDPA suffers from the typical syndrome of a lot of the Jackass movies, and indeed many TV to film adaptations, in that it struggles to stretch what is usually a 20-25 minute set-up over the course of ninety minutes. For every film that managed to nail the transition, like, for example Sacha Baron Cohen’s BORAT, there’s another that falls flat on its backside, like, for example, Sacha Baron Cohen’s BRUNO, a movie that, despite landing just three years after Cohen’s break-out hit, making a considerable $136 million (a little under half of BORAT), wasn’t as critically received or indeed as entertaining. The Jackass boys’ latest effort positions itself somewhere between both of those hidden-camera gems in terms of entertainment factor and quality, but falls way short in terms of the shock and gross-out factor (a good thing), although there is a pretty unexpected and mildly amusing fart gag that goes disgustingly wrong two-thirds in.
The main problem is the repetitiveness of the film in that there are not any other skits in the piece to break up Zisman gag after Zisman gag, and I can’t quite say that the character is one that is strong enough to carry a whole film. The leads are good with Knoxville reliable and happy to take the lead, daring as every as Zisman, but its the support of Nicoll who surprises as young Billy, and the finale, which sees the young actor quite literally centre stage, is worth the price of admission alone.
Fans of the franchise will enjoy this latest dish served from the Jackass boys, but like most fast-food TV, its accessible and momentarily satisfying but ultimately disposable, instantly forgettable fodder.
JACKASS PRESENTS: BAD GRANDPA is released in cinemas in the UK on 23rd October, 2013, and US cinemas on the 25th October, 2013.
