Jackass Presents : Bad Grandpa

JACKASS PRESENTS : BAD GRANDPA

Director : Jeff Tremaine

Year : 2013

Genre : Comedy

Rating : **

 

Thanks to the miracles of Youtube, Vines and other video sharing programmes, we can now see endless footage of people being scared, humiliated and generally made to look bad for free. Every day, millions of videos are uploaded to the internet and while some receive no recognition or views whatsoever, many end up becoming internet phenomenons. So why in this day and age, when people can see this sort of stuff for free has a movie like 'Bad Grandpa' been made? Surely now we have seen everything that hidden camera stunts can do and the ideas of pranking someone under false pretenses is now tired and old hat? Well, not in the eyes of the makers of this rubbishness, who still find fart jokes, public humiliation and the desecration of public and private property funny. Starring an unrecognizable Johnny Knoxville, 'Bad Grandpa' tells the story of the 86 year old misogynist and racist Irving Zissman who has to take his young grandson on a cross country journey to reunite him with his estranged father. On the way, the pair indulge in pranks, crashing weddings and generally causing chaos and mayhem wherever they go.

The film is directed by Jeff Tremaine who has worked with Knoxville on every 'Jackass' movie and he clearly knows how to set up his cameras and create a false sense of security to the unbeknownst public. However, the humour and the jokes used in 'Bad Grandpa' are so dated and not funny that we end up not only losing interest in the stunts and the set pieces, but the paper thin narrative that the film tries to interweave is also destroyed.  Maybe 10 or 20 years ago, these pranks may have felt fresh and original. Now in the wake of 'Borat', 'Bruno' and other more superior hidden camera movies, 'Bad Grandpa' comes across as recycled, useless and above all, boring.

While I don't particularly hate this film, I certainly don't recommend it. There is so much better stuff like this on Youtube and while Vines may be a lot shorter than a full length movie, the entertainment and comedic values you get from many of them is certainly more substantial than a huge majority of 'Bad Grandpa'. To be fair, Knoxville's makeup is pretty impressive and the young Jackson Nicoll does a good job of playing his role as the not - so - innocent grandson with a straight face but overall, the picture is certainly not worth the price of admission. Wait for it to come out on DVD; don't pay through the nose to see it at the cinema.