Father Time is Undefeated (My Review of Jackass Forever)

I'm a big time Jackass fan. I don't go as far as collecting memorabilia or building shrines of any of the cast members or anything, but I do have most of the movies on DVD/Bluray. This includes the CKY movies, the Jackass TV series, the Jackass movies 1-3, Bad Grandpa, and Viva La Bam. I don't have the Wild Boyz (good show but only decent gimmick imo) and I don't have Haggard, but I have seen them both and enjoyed them when I did. I even liked Tremaine's Swerved series on WWE.

Needless to say, I was stoked when I heard about Jackass Forever. My expectations were pretty high, but I knew it would be different even with the absence of one cast member (Ryan Dunn) and then later Bam. I thought we would get a tribute to the Jackass legacy while simultaneously getting a swan song.

After watching it and experiencing nearly 90 minutes of puppetry of the penis crossed with some new lame cast members, I can say I was pretty let down.

And in all honesty, I felt pretty bummed too. These guys aren't my heroes or anything, but I respect the hell out of them and it always felt like watching old friends having a good time. They put their bodies and brains on the line for so many years and now it seems to have finally caught up to them. Not in the sense that they looked terribly injured, but in the sense that they're too old to do the kind of shenanigans they used to do. This lead to the movie feeling incredibly compromised in the kind of "stunts" they could pull off.

I want to say 80% of the movie felt like it was just the old crew mutilating their genitalia somehow. Steve-O gets a bee hive around his penis. Pontius gets his penis bitten by a snapping turtle. Later he flattens it like a pancake. Ehren gets his mangled more than anyone else. Preston gets his balls hit by a machine that look like fists. Weeman gets a vulture to eat meat off his crotch. The only one who took any crazy bumps was Johnny Knoxville, and doing so knocked him out twice and caused him to retire from doing more stunts. This is a far cry from the old Jackass that mainly had to do with stunts where they could get seriously hurt and pranks on strangers.

Most of the more damaging stunts were left to the new crew. Poopies and Zach, who seemed to fit in the best but still left a little to be desired, were the ones who stood out to me the most. Zach I had seen do a few crazy stunts on YouTube. I had never heard of Poopies, but he seemed to gel the best with the new crew. Jasper, the other black guy (sorry I don't remember his name), and Rachel Wolfson are all pretty lame additions.

I think in some scenarios a female Jackass member can work, especially for pranks, but this movie didn't really make it work. You have a bunch of nearly naked guys mutilating their genitalia, getting injured by animals, getting shot out of cannons, and the stunts they had her do were lick a stun gun and get bitten by a scorpion. I don't even remember her being in the last skit or the Silence of the Lambs skit.

The Jackass dynamic is definitely suited more for a close group of friends who trust each other to do stupid shit around. Poopies was the only cast member who felt like a friend to the group, while the other new comers waited around until it was their turn. Never really adding anything new or fresh to the formula. I really hope they don't plan on making them carry the torch of this series.

All the original crew are extremely funny and quick witted and this always added to that feeling that we were just watching a bunch of close friends do crazy stuff with each other. In the first Jackass, the bit where they're terrorizing the golfers with the airhorn was hilarious. The cherry on top was the golfer confronting Knoxville and Knoxville saying "I've got bursitis". So the golfer asks "You've got bursitis so you have to play with a horn?" And Knoxville says "It helps".

The dynamic of close friends is kind of lost in this one since 1) they had to exclude some of their close friends and 2) none of the new cast members (minus Poopies) are funny and couldn't add to that dynamic.

In conclusion, can I recommend Jackass Forever? I guess I could. Keep your expectations very low. Don't plan on being amazed by any of the new talent. And know that father time has finally caught up to our old beloved Jackass crew where they no longer can do these dangerous stunts without seriously getting hurt. After all, father time is undefeated and we all have to hang them up eventually.