I am not ashamed to say that I enjoy the JACKASS movies. Yes, they are dumb. Yes, they are crass. But, some part of me cannot help but laugh at idiots falling down and hurting themselves. I just can’t help it. But, the latest film, BAD GRANDPA, is not like the three JACKASS movies that came before it. This movie actually has a plot!
86 year-old Irving Zisman is on a journey across America with the most unlikely companions, his 8 year-old Grandson Billy in “Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa.” This October, the signature Jackass character Irving Zisman (Johnny Knoxville) and Billy (Jackson Nicoll) will take movie audiences along for the most insane hidden camera road trip ever captured on camera.
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. Real people in unreal situations, making for one really messed up comedy.
So, what we have here is the “evolution” of the JACKASS concept: take a fictional character and plot and work in real reactions. Just like Sacha Baron Cohen‘s BORAT, seeing average people cower in stunned horror at an old man and a child doing unspeakable things is worth the price of admission alone. Johnny Knoxville is the most talented, acting-wise, of any of the JACKASS crew, so he is the natural choice to anchor this new project.
If you didn’t like the other JACKASS movies, you won’t like BAD GRANDPA, but as long as they are cheap to make and people flock to see them, we will continue to get them. JACKASS PRESENTS BAD GRANDPA opens in theaters on October 25, 2013.