Director: Jeff Tremaine
Starring: Johnny Knoxville, Jackson Nicoll
Cinematic Release: 25th October 2013
Budget: $15 million
Box Office: $40 million (so far)
With the original line-up more or less scattered to the four winds by time, and, in the case of Ryan Dunn (to whom this picture is dedicated), tragedy, Jackass progenitor Johnny Knoxville has to take a different approach to the formula in this latest instalment of the gross-out and stunt-sketch franchise, weaving a fictional plot and characters around his antics, adding in a helping of prosthetic make-up and a foul-mouthed sprog sidekick for good measure. Like a bizarre mix of Borat and Up, Knoxville takes on the eponymous guise of pervy 86-year-old widower Iriving Zisman, who must ferry his grandson Billy (Jackson Nicoll) across country to his deadbeat dad after his equally deadbeat mother is sent to jail again, during which he and the precocious tot bond over a mutual love of embarrassing mayhem.
This plot is mostly dispensed with early on; both leads are introduced in different, funny waiting room gags where their respective schticks are laid on the line (Irving disgustingly shameless, his kin disgustingly shameless and almost grossly cute). then joined together during a calamitous funeral via a crude scene involving Irving and a drinks machine, before sealing the set-up with what may be the first ever fooling-the-public gag to take place via Skype. From here, it’s full steam across America in Irving’s bottle-green Lincoln with only some fishing tackle, Irving’s wife’s (Spike Jonze) corpse, and some jokes of variable quality in tow.
As Borat showed, the protagonist is the key to whether or not this type of sketch-umentary works, and the Bad Grandpa himself is just weak sauce; where Sacha Baron Cohen’s naive Khazak had America’s fear of the foreigner with which to wring the reactions from unsuspecting members of the public, the typically game Knoxville has only a one-dimensional repertoire of vulgarity to draw on that wears thin rather quickly. Some scenes score – a bingo hall session that goes badly wrong, a folding bed scam, and Irving having a ball (or two) in a ladies’ night strip show all prompt some knee-jerk chuckles – but there’s only so much you can take of his lecherous advances to any woman who crosses his path before the yawns start to threaten.
Nicoll fares much better, his Billy unleashing blunt expletives and awkward kid questions with doe-eyed innocence, pulling the biggest gurns from the unwitting dupes he meets, but the film is at its most successful when the pair are together, exuding natural chemistry and split-second timing that provides the most hilarious, and most real, moments. The coin-op buggy through the window works only because of Irving and Billy’s banter before the punchline; Irving’s tete-a-tete with a restaurant owner whose sign he has just wrecked, and a shoplifting skit are built around their back-and-forth; even the old man’s cheesy lines work better when the kid is on the scene.
The movie’s marquee laughs show just how potent a combination the duo can be. Irving’s attempt to send Billy to his dad via post gets a contender for best reaction (“You’re a human bein’!”), a moment of warmth in a roadside diner is deviously twisted into some extremely well-timed and extremely disgusting potty humour, and the film’s only real bit of satire – an uproarious barb thrown at kiddies’ beauty pageants involving cross-dressing and twerking – is a moment of pure genius, the shocked gapes of a gaggle of goggle-eyed pageant mothers and the “applause” at the end nothing less than pitch perfect.
Unfortunately, the same alchemical effect doesn’t translate to the moments of “plot development” that we’re subjected to at various points between jokes, reminding us of the duff framing story – watch out for the film’s worst gag, a “flashback” mishap with between Irving and a particularly well-endowed fish – and killing the buzz that the two leads create. Both actors and characters remain likeable enough as a double-act in these scenes, but it’s far too obvious that the conversations are scripted, stilted, and only there to pad out the run-time. And since the scope of the gags on offer are so paper-thin, the whole thing feels awfully padded.
For a concept built around people’s reactions to mankind’s baser functions, Bad Grandpa represents either a giant leap forward for the product, or the last gasp of a franchise whose core audience have grown up and long since traded trolley crashes for the rigors of keeping their mortgages fed and watered. Which one of these choices turns out to be true depends entirely on whether or not Knoxville and Nicoll are on screen, and whether they’re lampooning people on the street or going through the motions of a bad TV movie storyline. The former hits with the force of an octogenarian being thrown through a shop window, but the latter is just plain boring, and what could have been a decent entry in the mockumentary pantheon ends up being an advertisement for the chapter skip functions of DVD and Blu-Ray players.
Worth a look, but wait for the home release.
[easyreview cat1title=”The Arcade Verdict” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”5.5″]
