Full disclosure, this review is going to be extremely biased: in middle school, I had a crush on a skateboarder, and all that he and his friends would talk about was the Jackass 3D movie. And because back then I looked like Lola from Big Mouth and was solidly in my Pick Me Era, I decided that the only way I would get this skinny freckled white boy to talk to me was by becoming a Jackass expert.
Instead, I became a fan.
Jackass (forever) rules because there’s absolutely nothing funnier than a guy getting hit in the nuts. Sorry, but it’s true. In the current “climate” of endlessly pointless debates à la “can you make a joke about this?”* it cuts straight through the BS to provide an unrestrained series of back-to-back laughs.
Boys-will-be-boys chaos at its purest and most well-meaning, it is a perfectly crafted ode to low-brow comedy, in a landscape where gratuitous, straight-forward, sitcom-like jokes have been replaced by the more pensive comedy-drama tone or ‘wholesome comedies’ like Ted Lasso.**
When is the last time that content made you react physically? These days, you can watch a beheading video at 8am and carry on with your day. So much shocking shit gets thrown at us that we’re sort of numb to it. And yet, miraculously, Jackass Forever will make you audibly gasp, cackle out loud uncontrollably, shield your eyes from the screen, and like a guy sat behind me at the VUE in Leicester Square, shout “NO WAY POOPIES!” at the top of your lungs at 4pm in a crowded cinema.
The entire film is an incredibly visceral experience that you share with the entire room, and after 2 years of hearing that other people’s breath will literally kill you, it’s kinda nice that we can all laugh together at Preston Lacy shitting himself in a silver Lycra suit.
But the genius of Jackass is less so in the creativity and intensity of the stunts (launching Steve-O in Port A Potty on a pair of bungee cords in Poo Cocktail Supreme, or my personal favourite Jet Engine, because it just looks fun) or in the high hit rate of its gags. It's in the loving, self-aware stupidity that makes everyone —including the audience— feel like they’re in on the joke.
Jackass Forever is no different. As the last instalment of the series, it is even more delightfully nostalgic than its predecessors, as we’re given intimate access to the very friendships and camaraderie that make stunts like Silence of the Lambs (the unsuspecting cast is locked in a pitch-black room with what they think is a deadly snake) work as well as they do.
You know when you meet back up with old friends and feel like no time has passed at all? Well, that’s what Jackass Forever feels like. On top of it all, Johnny Knoxville is Daddy, and you’ll see Machine Gun Kelly get absolutely WHIPPED in the face by a giant mechanical hand.
If you’ve hated Jackass for the last 20 years, then this movie isn’t for you. But if you think the idea of a marching band being thrown off a high-speed treadmill one by one is hilarious...
The boys that get it, get it, and the boys that don’t, don’t. One thing is for sure though: they’re back in town again.
Mallory
*(the answer to that is you can make a joke about anything AS LONG AS IT’S FUNNY which many of these ‘anti cancel culture comedians’ are not—they’re just racist)
** Review coming soon.
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