By Ashley Mussbacher (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: November 20, 2013
The fourth installment of the Jackass film series, Bad Grandpa, upholds the series’ expectation for dumb humour and vulgar content. It stars creator and cast member of MTV’s Jackass, Johnny Knoxville, and his nine-year-old co-star Jackson Nicoll in a crude yet hilarious public experiment. Director Jeff Tremaine takes Jackass films to a whole new level with the inclusion of unsuspecting bystanders, letting the ultimate experience of the movie swing from one extreme to the other in terms of hilarity.
No one in the movie aside from the main cast and crew knew they were a part of the movie until after the prank or scene had happened. This lucky—or unlucky, depending on how you look at it—person would ultimately have a genuine reaction, caught on camera and delivered to the cinema for our viewing pleasure. Fortunately for Jackass films, this makes the movie fascinating for a first-time watch – how do people react and will we sympathize with them or not?
Unfortunately, this was really all the film had going for it. The movie opens with a scene of Nicoll sitting at a doctor’s office between two strangers, who have no idea they’re being caught on hidden camera. Suddenly, Nicoll starts a one-sided conversation with one of them about how his mother smokes crack and her breath stinks. The audience watching the movie can feel the tension in the room between the two strangers and the child. It is this awkwardness that makes certain scenes in the movie successful.
A common theme that ran throughout the film was things people are discouraged to do or say in public. I’m sure we can delve into a social commentary on this, but I don’t think Tremaine’s intention behind Jackass films was to produce intense philosophical discussions on political correctness or cultural etiquette. If you’re looking for a few cheap laughs, however, Bad Grandpa works.
Though most of the content is funny, it eventually falls into the trap of being repetitive. There are only so many times we can watch an old man hit on young women—and in the most vulgar way possible—before the women’s reactions become predictable. After we’ve reached the half-way point, the jokes get boring and the movie’s success hinges on the storyline.
Basically Nicoll’s eight-year-old character cannot stay with his mother, because she’s going to jail. He’s ditched, with his grandpa to look after him, but Grandpa doesn’t want to look after the child either. So, they make a cross-country trip to drop him off with his dead-beat, drug-using father. Even from the beginning, we all know how this simple storyline will turn out. Jackass isn’t known for its complex plotlines.
That leaves us with a movie whose only redeeming quality is that it can make the audience squirm uncomfortably at times, laugh hysterically at others, be utterly grossed out, or bored the rest of the way through.
