Jolt Country

Nothing lasts forever. Not even grown men punching each other in the balls.

The story of how Jackass came together is interesting and well documented. After Jeff Tremaine flew Philadelphia-based Bam Margera (the mastermind behind a series of videos titled of Camp Kill Yourself that featured skateboarding, pranks, and stunts) out to the west coast to meet likeminded Johnny Knoxville and other miscreants working for the Big Brother skateboard magazine, the seeds of Jackass had been sown. Tremaine auditioned a few more performers and, after a bidding war, sold the show to MTV. Jackass suffered from cable censorship and struggled to pay its stars what they were worth, two problems that were reconciled when the troupe took their "talents" to the big screen in 2002.

Twenty years later, the boys -- well, most of them -- are back in 2022's Jackass Forever, a film that presumes to be a new beginning but feels more like a sendoff.

Jackass Forever is being marketed as a passing of the torch, and just a few minutes into the film viewers will understand why. Johnny Knoxville, sporting silvery-white hair, looks beyond his years at 50, and Steve-O's mouth full of perfectly fake teeth tell their own story. All of the original members who returned are pushing 50 and showing their age, their bodies paying for years of smashing for laughs. Perhaps even more telling are all the people who didn't return. Bam Margera, who has publicly suffered multiple mental and legal issues over the past few years, was fired from filming early in the production. Mat Hoffman was in the hospital for a brain bleed during filming; animal handling expert Manny Puig was in the hospital being treated for COVID-19. Loomis Fall was missing. None of the CKY crew save for Chris Raab returned. Rip Taylor, who was appeared in every previous Jackass film, passed away in 2019. Perhaps most of all, the lack of Ryan Dunn, who passed away in a car accident in 2011, is palpable.

Backfilling those gaps are six new performers, most of whom are forgettable. Most memorable is Zach "Zackass" Holmes, a morbidly obese man whose fifteen seconds of internet fame came from wearing a vest made out of firecrackers and lighting it. Holmes worked with Rachel Wolfson on a series called Fail News and Chad Tepper on his series Too Stupid to Die, two more new cast members. Frankly I don't remember the others, and neither will anyone else. One guy's name is Poopies. Unlike the original crew, all of whom have personalities, the new crew will likely be remembered as the fat guy, the black guy, the girl, and the others who stand around laughing and applauding their heroes.

Lest one worry the boys have grown soft in their old age, five minutes into the film they've built a jump ramp using a piece of wood with members of the cast lying under one end, and sent Zackass off to jump it while riding a miniature motorcycle. Those under the ramp are smooshed, Zach spills into the grass as the motorcycle takes a dive, and someone standing too close to the fracas gets punched in the balls for no apparent reason. As much as their aging bodies will allow them, Jackass is mostly back.

Jackass Forever features a lot of stunts, a lot of concussions, and a lot of dicks being abused. Dicks are punched by MMA fighters, smashed with airbags, hit with hockey pucks, covered in bees, and targeted by softballs, which it turns out are not particularly soft.

More than just stunts, Jackass has always been about the pranks the crew pull on one another. When most people think of pranks at the workplace they imagine fake vomit and plastic doggie doo. In Jackass, the guys rig a Port-O-Potty with explosives and wait until one the film's costars is sitting inside before detonating it. In another scene, a coffee stand is rigged with airbags designed to surprise cast members as they ordering their morning coffee. I've said it before and I'll say it again -- being within a thousand yards of any Jackass set sounds like a terrible time.

If the goal of Jackass Forever was to hand the franchise off to a new generation of performers, it failed. Even the new recruits willing to take one on the chin (literally) for the team, like Zach and (sigh) Poopies, seem unqualified to lead the new breed... or anyone, really. As a send off, the film mostly works. The old crew are somewhat less willing and definitely less able to take as much punishment as they did in their youth, and the long list of those those missing in action points to the fact that the franchise might have pushed things one film too far (some would say four). These are not the Jackasses we deserved, but they're the ones left standing.

Toward the end as Johnny Knoxville is being wheeled out of an emergency room while he recalls his latest round of injuries, it feels like this is a good place to close the curtain. They, and their balls, gave it their all -- now take a bow, fellas, and hobble away while you still can.

Just for giggles...