Jackass Forever is a kinder, gentler version of Jackass, but it’s not an adult version, thankfully. If anything, Johnny Knoxville and his merry gang of gluttons for torture have regressed in the best conceivable manner, utilizing the full range of modern cinema to depict some of the most ludicrous material ever placed onscreen. Knoxville, dressed as Lieutenant-Colonel-Kilgore-from-Apocalypse-Now, leads a small army of soldiers against a big, flaccid, oddly familiar-looking kaiju spreading havoc throughout a metropolis, in a stunt sequence more expensive and elaborate than arguably any in Jackass history. Naturally, the kaiju is Chris Pontius’ penis and testicles, which have been painted and are being guided about a miniature metropolis by wires and strings. The cinematic splendor!
You have one guess as to how this scene, well, comes to a conclusion.
Of course, the bulk of Jackass’s adventures ends in a gruesome manner. The interaction between the offenders, victims, and observers, not the intricacy, originality, or grossness of the activity, is what makes a Jackass stunt a Jackass stunt, as I recently explained. The stunt comes first, then the agony, and last, the friendship. So, what’s the point of comparing a scenario in Jackass Number Two in which Dave England and Ryan Dunn are trapped in a limo full of bees to Steve-O getting a colony of bees attached to his penis in Jackass Forever? What counts is what happens next: yelling, cursing, laughing, and attempting to flee the swarm of bees. (And, now and again, some damage surveying: “There’s a bunch of them in the tainted zone,” for example.) Knoxville and his director, Jeff Tremaine, are fully aware of this; the aftermath of each act gets a lot of screen time, with their cameras capturing all of the giggling and hugging.
There’s a lot of embracing in Jackass Forever, believe it or not, and the majority of it feels real. Knoxville seemed ecstatic to have these people on his side. It’s possible that this is due to the fact that the film reunites a group that hasn’t worked together in 11 years and began their antics in 2000. (Some new characters have been added, including Rachel Wolfson, the first female Jackass, who performs “Scorpion Botox,” the one stunt in the film that has already given me nightmares.) It’s also likely that Knoxville, who has had a succession of concussions and other potentially fatal illnesses over the years, considers himself fortunate to be alive. Part of it could be owing to the fact that they’ve lost members along the line; Ryan Dunn, the subject of the film, died in 2011, and Bam Margera left the band. As a result, while Jackass Forever is a lot of fun, it’s also a lot more emotional than its predecessors. It’s palpable in the characters onscreen, and it’s likely palpable in the audience as well. Seeing these middle-aged masochists continue to inflict misery on themselves for our entertainment serves as a reminder of how quickly time passes.
Even when it comes to stunts, though, this Jackass has a gentler edge than prior installments. Except for one amazing climax part with a bull that visibly broke Knoxville’s, there’s less shit and puke this time around (though presumably more abused dongs) and fewer stunts that look designed to truly break people’s bodies. If electrical zappers terrify you, you’re in luck because they frequent that well. Despite the cast and crew’s assurances that these zappers are far more potent than the ordinary party trick, the result feels a little tiny, a little mundane, for Jackass. Nonetheless, they make the best of it, and the zappers’ small size allows them to be released on any unsuspecting cast member at any time.
In the earlier films, there was also a certain brazen, self-aware meanness that washed away in the end since everyone was in on the joke. (On their own, such pranks could have seemed pointlessly cruel, but they worked in the setting of the films.) There’s a lot less of it here, probably due to Margera’s absence, who was frequently the instigator of such pranks and occasionally their primary victim; his attacks on his mother and father were a legendary running gag. Those weren’t the highlights of the previous films, but they did give them a sense of scale — as if we were seeing an entire ecosystem of nonsense and idiocy rather than a series of unrelated gags.
One truly intricate, multilayer prank in Jackass Forever may be one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen anyplace. I’m not going to tell you what happens, but it involves a venomous rattlesnake, a darkened room, several pots and pans, and a table covered with thumbtacks and mousetraps. And it’s played out on a variety of victims, with the film cutting between their various reactions to give viewers the complete gamut of emotions. Ehren McGhehey appears traumatized by the time it’s all said and done. He refuses to leave the chamber, fearing that more horrors await him beyond the doors. “In here, I’ll start a new life!” He exclaims, “I’m fucking going to live here!” He seemed to be serious about it. Who can blame him, after all? It was a good time.
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