Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa

The only way you can judge a movie like Bad Grandpa is by how much you laughed during the film.  I will admit to laughing out loud on a few occasions, and smiling more than once.  Even if the joke wasn't working, I still appreciated the effort.  Look, I'm not saying this is a great comedy, and you should rush out and see it.  But, it entertained me enough while I was watching it, so I'm giving it a marginal recommendation.

The film is a spinoff of the Jackass TV series and films, and unlike the earlier entries, has a loose plot to tie together the various stunts, pranks, and gross out gags that make up a majority of the film.  We're introduced to an 86-year-old codger named Irving Zisman (Johnny Knoxville, under a lot of make up) as he sits in a hospital waiting room, and learns that his wife has passed away. ("I thought she'd never die!", he tells a woman seated next to him.) Irving now aspires to spend his remaining days hitting strip clubs and massage parlors, but before he can live it up, he learns that his daughter (Georgina Cates) is being sent to prison on a drug charge, and is entrusting her eight-year-old son Billy (Jackson Nicoll, who acted alongside Knoxville in last year's Fun Size) in his care.  Irving must drive cross country with the kid, so that they can track down Billy's deadbeat dad (Greg Harris), who will take him off his hands permanently.  Eventually, the grandpa and boy bond over childish pranks played on unsuspecting people captured on hidden camera footage.

That's pretty much the entire 90 minutes or so of the film wrapped up right there.  The movie is a combination of scripted story scenes (where Irving and Billy drive cross country, and exchange insults with each other), and "hidden camera" scenes where the two walk into places like a restaurant or a grocery store, and we get to witness locals who don't know they are on camera, and their reactions as this old man and boy seemingly do things like shoplift, shoot fecal matter on the walls, and scream lurid pick up lines at women who walk by.  I will admit to laughing at several of the staged pranks, such as one involving an adjustable bed, and a sequence where Irving attempts to mail the boy he's put in charge of to his father.  The reactions from the shocked (and sometimes horrified) unsuspecting locals is often amusing enough in itself. 

If you've enjoyed any of the earlier Jackass films, you'll probably find a lot to like here.  As someone who hasn't been a huge fan of the series, I appreciated the plot-driven angle, and the emphasis on the reactions of people who are not in on the joke.  The movie does try to add a certain twisted sentimental angle with Irving and Billy bonding during their adventures, and while it's not entirely effective, I do have to admit that I found myself liking these two characters.  Knoxville has good comedic chemistry with his young co-star, who it must be said even gets to stand out on his own on more than one occasion, such as when the kid clings onto an unsuspecting man passing by, saying that he wants the man to be his new daddy.  The jokes are juvenile and crude, as is to be expected, but there's also a certain sweetness to some of them that probably helped push me to a favorable response.

Bad Grandpa arrives at a time when the studios are starting to roll out their big, intense, and serious Fall movies, so maybe it was just good timing, and I was just in the mood for a very silly movie like this.  Whatever the case, I laughed, and even when I wasn't laughing, I was amused.  At the very least, it's something different for the Jackass franchise.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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