"Jackass Forever 2022" movie review

 Jackass Forever

Yes, really: four stars for "Jackass Forever," a movie in which people are blown to smithereens in Port-a-Potties, strapped into centrifuges and forced to drink liquids until they vomit, threatened by bears and snakes, stung by scorpions and bees, and repeatedly bashed in the genitals by more people and devices than can be cited in detail in the sentence you're reading, lest it

Let's live by the proverb (huhr, huhr! He used the dictum (pronounced "dict") that the site's founder cherished: a work should be judged by what it is and attempts to be. How successfully a film accomplishes the objectives it seems to have set for itself is indicated by the star rating at the top of a RogerEbert.com review. This explains why Mr. Ebert gave four stars to "Au Hasard Balthazar," "The Tree of Life," "Blazing Saddles," and "Raiders of the Lost Ark." When a meal is only a hot dog with mustard, it is not appropriate to criticize it for not being a sea bream filet with citrus fruit, peppers, and caramelized ventrèche.

This is why I'm happy to say that "Jackass Forever" is the most in-depth application of the model that the "Jackass" TV series and film franchise created and honed. It's a mix of a WWE-style spectacle, a Buster Keaton-Jackie Chan slapstick spectacular, and a "geek trick." Comedy performers and stuntmen Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Dave England, Wee Man, Danger Ehren, Preston Lacy, and Sean "Poopies" McInerney, as well as junior jackasses like Eric Manaka (of the "Jackass"-adjacent "Action Point") and Rachel Wolfson, and special guest stars Eric André and Machine Gun Kelly, all gladly injure and degrade themselves under the direction of lead jackass Johnny Knoxville as he does when he tasers them and dumps buckets of pig's sperm on their heads.

The fact that "Jackass" has been the subject of poker-faced academic and critical analysis since the minute it debuted on MTV won't surprise anyone who has read this far. Through the prisms of amateurism, performativity, mortality, "transgression, abjection and the economy of white masculinity," coded homosexuality, and homoeroticism, it has been examined. An article about "Jackass 3-D" from 2010 posed the question, "Has there ever been a group of straight men who wanted to f**k each other as desperately as these guys?" after mentioning that the film had been shown at the Museum of Modern Art in "the very building that also houses a Picasso collection."

It is considerably more pleasurable to spelunk for meaning when the "Jackass" group constantly maintains plausible deniability regarding whether they knowingly include any of this into their work, as enthusiasts of other populist art forms such as pro wrestling and soap operas have done for years. According to Jorie Lagerwey in the Spring 2004 issue of The University of Southern California's Spectator magazine, "Jackass' amateur aesthetic visually includes the usage of the fisheye lens carried over from [the founding filmmakers'] skate movies, frequent zooms, and jerky, handheld cameras." Additionally, it heavily relies on spontaneous direct address when introducing scenes and making comments to the camera during stunts. It also frequently puts the backstage—whether for planning and preparation or while filming—in front of the audience.

The film is also a lively—though gleefully weird—example of what critic Matt Singer refers to as the "legacyquel"—a piece of work that aims to pass the torch from a series' founding generation to its successors while incorporating themes of aging, physical decline, and the certainty of death into the narrative rather than pretending to be immune to such concerns while whistling through the proverbial graveyard.

As it turns out, this graveyard is more than just a metaphor: in a lengthy scene that purposefully mirrors a previous scene, Wee Man is staked out in a cemetery practically naked with raw meat bits piled on and around his twig and berries in anticipation of a vulture's approach. As they see, coworkers in voodoo priest garb laugh and bray.

You could argue that this is too obvious. But do you know what else is overly direct? pretty much every frame of every "Jackass" variation, even the ones where characters get punched in the nose.

For a very long time, Johnny and the team have been open about these elements of their line of work. The role of Knoxville's "Bad Grandpa," who reappears in "Jackass Forever," has frequently seemed like a cunning way to avoid questions about the wisdom—forget dignity!—of people continuing in this line of work into middle age and beyond. There are times when one or more of the guys just give up or plead for mercy, either out of dread for their life or because a stunt coordinator or animal handler on the film has decided that it's not worth it because someone might get killed. (Jackass actor Bam Margera scarcely appears in the film but is suing the producers for breaching his civil rights; his case is incredibly attuned to the gestalt of "Jackass").

More than 20 years after first watching "Jackass" on MTV, and on the eve of my youngest son's 18th birthday, I saw "Jackass Forever" at a free radio screening on a chilly weeknight, 24 months into a pandemic, after having lost numerous loved ones to Covid, heart issues, cancer, drug addiction, and plain, boring old age. Many readers of this review won't be interested in any of that information. I bring it up nonetheless because the film shows how immutable the facts of aging, physical infirmity, maturity (or lack thereof), and the sanding away of youthful delusions are and does so with the same level of awe as a performer gazing into the fanged maw of a spider that is about to bite him in the face.

In addition to everything else that has been seen in "Jackass," it is about the thin line between bravery and foolhardiness, if there even is one; and related to that, it may be about how we all know, deep down, that someday we'll all be fertilizing daffodils, to paraphrase Professor Keating in "Dead Poets Society," and that once you accept that truth, your only two options are to (1) scream; or (2) run away.

The Jackass cast is heavily focused on (2). However, the warmth that exists between them is so real that we are unable to ignore how significant (1) is. Every stunt revolves around the interaction between (1) and (2). The gang invents the silliest and most absurd dares, risking embarrassment, misery, and even death. But none of them would even think about doing all of this if they didn't have supportive buddies cheering them on from the sidelines, ready to charge in brandishing a fire extinguisher, cattle prod, shark repellant, or whatever. In the sake of comedy and excitement, these performers wet themselves, projectile-poop in front of each other, float in a tub while trying to set farts on fire, expose their genitalia, as well as horrifying injuries they have sustained. There is no shame or condemnation there; only affection and a shared conviction that this is a fun way to kill time. 

A father and son are involved in a few pranks and competitions, and there are some jokes that are reminiscent of things the gang did ten or twenty years ago. The latter allow the editors to combine video of Knoxville being thrown upside down like a rag doll while sporting white hair and a sagging, bruised body with shots of the same thing occurring when he had dark hair and a wiry body. A remark from another artist who had a lot on his mind but also enjoyed a good pratfall or fart joke comes to mind when you see the cuts between the present and younger incarnations of the lads: "To me, fair friend, you can never be old."