Much can be said about the Jackass series of films (and the TV show that started it all) and what it means in our culture, what it says about masculinity and friendship, yadda yadda. Honestly, the heart of these movies is pretty simple. At first glance, Jackass embodies the old adage, “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” like nothing else. But Jackass knows that people getting hurt can be extremely funny and friendship means both taking one for the team and laughing about it together afterward.
The language is universal, even if it isn’t for everyone.
But for those who count themselves in the Jackass fandom, Jackass Forever is a mostly triumphant sequel and worth the decade-long wait. It is the fourth film in the series and likely the last with the original cast members (Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Dave England, “Danger Ehren” McGhehey, Preston Lacy, and Wee Man) who are all in their 40s and 50s. It will be overly familiar to fans, as the format has not changed much at all. The things that were funny in the first three movies are still hilarious now. Stun guns? Still funny. Challenging gravity and the laws of physics? Definitely funny. Getting punched? Yeah. Costumes? Absolutely. Another aspect of the format that hasn’t changed is this series’ love of whimsical dioramas and genitals. That is all I will say about that; it’s best to go in unaware and prepared for surprises.
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There are no narrative threads or underlying themes to think about, nothing except glorious, ridiculous, juvenile antics rooted in friendship and camaraderie. There have been prior attempts at attaching some kind of narrative or “plot” to pranks and stunts (Bad Grandpa, a spin-off from the Jackass films) but I am thankful that the regular movies are completely devoid of that. If there is a Jackass Cinematic Universe, it’s bound by the way Knoxville, director Jeff Tremaine, writer and producer Spike Jonze, and the entire cast have created an iconic series based on absurdity and pratfall humor in a more global, internet-enabled era, facilitated by the boredom of suburbia, skateboard culture, and the early aughts.
The first half of Jackass Forever is the strongest. My sides were splitting and I hadn’t laughed so hard in a long time (for the record, my favorite bit was “Silence of the Lambs”). While the movie sags a bit in the middle it isn’t for very long, especially since the entire film is a tightly paced 1 hour and 44 minutes. A great deal of Jackass Forever relies on new variations of familiar pranks and stunts like “Cup Test” and Dave England’s toilet bowl antics. There are very few pranks on regular people who are not in on the joke, which is partly because of shooting during COVID and the fact that these types of pranks can come off as cringey nowadays. More bodies are thrown into beds of cacti, there are plenty of ramps and rickety bicycles, there are plenty of dangerous animals, Lance Bangs vomits again, and there is obviously another rocket or cannon. By my count, the original cast has a larger role in pranks this time around, and more stunts go to the new (younger, more durable) cast, though Danger Ehren gets to be in several of the best bits and one particularly painful stunt and steals the show at times, particularly in “Silence of the Lambs” when his eyes are as large as plates.
“I got this. I got this!” Knoxville says in the first Jackass movie, just before he tries to skateboard down a railing and crashes into the concrete below, sending his compatriots into peals of laughter. This kind of hubris is like jet fuel to the Jackass movies, and is what sustains Jackass Forever, particularly with the new cast members. Among them are Sean McInerney, also known as Poopies, who worked with Steve-O during a Shark Week special that turned into an actual shark attack that severed tendons in McInerney’s hand. Another is Eric Manaka, who worked with Knoxville on the movie Action Point. Zach Holmes hosted a stunt show on MTV, just like his forebears. Jasper Dolphin is a rapper and part of the Odd Future group. Manaka and Dolphin are the first two Black cast members as well, and Jasper brings along his father, Dark Shark, who is less game to get involved in shenanigans but provides some funny commentary on these lunatics.
Rachel Wolfson is a stand-up comic who is the first woman on the Jackass crew. Unfortunately, Wolfson doesn’t get much to do and her two biggest stunts are amusing but not standouts. I’m not sure why she got less to do than the others, but it didn’t seem to be about subjecting a woman to pain (she licks a taser in one stunt and gets stung repeatedly by a scorpion in another). I wonder if it is about the type of pain a woman is allowed to sustain on screen, as if Knoxville, Tremaine, et. al. suspected the audience might not actually be on board with seeing a woman crash head-first into a wall while riding a bike (as Manaka does) or into cacti (like Holmes). Still, there are a number of stunts where Wolfson could have stepped in, like one where Danger Ehren and Dark Shark compete to blow a tarantula towards the other person to avoid being bitten, or competing against Machine Gun Kelly to pedal an exercise bike as fast as possible to avoid being hit by a giant hand. It’s also possible that she was involved in a number of bits that didn’t make it to the final cut and she will have a larger role in Jackass 4.5 (it is tradition for unused footage to be put into a separate behind the scenes movie) later this year.
“It’s gonna hurt real bad, but it’s just loud,” Knoxville says in Jackass Number Two when he’s trying to convince Ryan Dunn and Bam Margera to get blasted with a large amount of rubber balls that are typically used outside of embassies for crowd control. None of this series would work without Knoxville being an equal participant and leading the brigade and providing encouragement. Like with previous movies, he puts himself in the worst situations. Knoxville’s pièce de résistance in Jackass Forever involves an angry bull and it goes very wrong in that Knoxville gets twisted and turned rapidly and then lands in a bone-crushing heap. Stunts have gone poorly in the past, leading to significant injury. I suspect that if anything much worse had happened to Knoxville the footage would not have been included but otherwise, such a feat has to be included in the movie because of the cost to the man. Who can watch something like this and conclude this path of pain and destruction to one’s own body is worthwhile?
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I don’t know, watch Jackass. Isn’t it hilarious?
On the whole, Jackass Forever is exactly what it needed to be. If there’s melancholy at all it’s rooted in two well-known events, Bam Margera being removed from the movie allegedly due to sobriety issues and Ryan Dunn’s death in 2011, not even a year after Jackass 3D. The movie pays fitting tribute to Dunn and in watching past movies it is clear that his presence is well missed even as the cast carries on with aplomb. These men have gotten older but they retain their mischievous winks and shit-eating grins, passing along the Jackass attitude for the next generation of Jackasses.
