“Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.”

Justin’s rating: I always wonder what their wives think of this

Justin’s review: One of the many, many fears that come with growing older is the worry that you’ll simply become irrelevant in your elderly years. There’s this fear that one day, you’ll hit a certain age, and that’s it. Your best years are behind you, you won’t be able to do the things you used to love, and nobody will care as much about your life. It’s a silly fear that needs to be punched in the face, because it’s only true if you buy into that nonsense.

And the Jackass crew isn’t going to. No way, no how.

Two decades after flattening us with laughter, slapstick, and insane stunts from the first movie, Johnny Knoxville and his crew staged one of the most amazing returns to form. Even though many of them were pushing 50 with multiple body traumas, they signed on board with another body-punishing, anxiety-inducing, humiliation-producing tour of duty. The end result, Jackass Forever, became one of the surprise hits of 2022, making a very tidy profit and raking in praise from the critics.

Now I am way behind on this series, having only watched the first one back when I was 20 years younger than I am now, but I find a good comeback story irresistible. Plus, I was curious if these bunch of goons could make me laugh as hard as I did back in the day.

For the uninitiated, this isn’t a conventional movie at all. It’s a series of elaborate stunt challenges with an eye on both the risk factor and potential for humor. Knoxville and some of his old crew are joined by six new recruits to subject themselves to these, often doing so with a manic, wild attitude that one might better associate with immature college kids. People get scared, they get hurt, things get really gross, loud music is played, they have their egos deflated — and we reap the laughter.

If there is a “story” here — such as it is — it’s the combination of the cast’s age and the desire to do this one last time, 12 years after their previous project. And despite their obvious age, this cast delights in nurturing their inner child and gleefully tormenting their friends.

And these aren’t sanitized, carefully coordinated stunts in which they’re more safe than they look. By all reports, the performers got brutalized in the process of making this movie, including several hospital visits. It’s a wonder that nobody was killed, really.

We get such wonders of the modern world as trying to evade a diamondback rattlesnake in a pitch-black room while their friends (with night vision goggles) keep messing with them, musical chairs that catapult someone up 10 feet into the air, jumping into a field of cacti, using a scorpion for botox injections, testing out sports cups with professional softball pitches, battling in the Spider Helmet, and, of course, getting blown out of a cannon over a lake while being dressed as Icarus.

As with any assortment of skits and pranks, some of it works and some doesn’t. I found Jackass Forever to be an uneven experience — occasionally flat-out hilarious, sometimes repulsively gross (I did NOT need to see that many naked man-parts), and sometimes not that great. It is weird that they made a bit of a deal out of bringing on a couple of women and then hardly included them in most of the challenges. But I would rightly gather that with the right set of friends, this could be a pretty amusing group activity. You know, to watch… not to do.

I’m glad they got their last hurrah and all that, but… yeah, it’s time to be done with this. Maybe we all can grow up a little bit now?

Intermission!

• Who else misses the classic MTV astronaut logo? Glad to see it here!
• Of course this would begin with a giant monster rampage. Wait, that’s not a monster…
• “I’ll start a new life in here.”
• The Buffalo Bill dancer in the dark
• Slow-mo makes so many things funnier
• “Here comes the queen… looking for her king.”
• “It’s kind of like Mister Snuffaluffogus.”
• Licking the electric lollipop
• “Is that venomous?” “Ehh?”
• “Wait, you don’t need to hear that now.”
• “I don’t need physics from you guys right now!”
• Trying to light a fart underwater: “How was work today, honey?”
• That spider helmet is everyone’s worst nightmare
• “He’s bleeding, my hairline’s receding.”
• The triple wedgie
• About time we had an exploding toilet
• …And then the bear came out
• Wee Man’s tank