Action Point

With his dis­tinc­tive laugh and pen­chant for mis­chief, John­ny Knoxville served as the poster child for the good-natured nihilism of the ear­ly 2000s. As the front­man of MTV’s Jack­ass, he stood for noth­ing more com­pli­cat­ed than drink­ing a cou­ple of beers, get­ting into trou­ble and hav­ing a good time.

The imp­ish enfant ter­ri­ble had to grow up some­time – this is chart­ed from Jack­ass: The Movie into Jack­ass: 3.5. If we con­sid­er the Jack­ass tril­o­gy Knoxville’s cin­e­mat­ic Bil­dungsro­man, his lat­est ven­ture into the world of prat­falls and penis jokes serves as an epi­logue – a harken­ing back to the glo­ry days, with just a hint of the fantastical.

In sim­i­lar pros­thet­ics to those he donned for Jack­ass Presents: Bad Grand­pa, Knoxville opens the film as an elder­ly ver­sion of DC Carv­er, regal­ing his young Gen Z grand­daugh­ter with tales from his glo­ry days, when he ran an amuse­ment park in Cal­i­for­nia by the name of Action Point. Flash­backs lend the nar­ra­tive a sim­i­lar qual­i­ty to Big Fish or The Princess Bride, where­by an elder­ly rel­a­tive attempts to impart life lessons upon their young kin in the form of a tall tale.

There is some­thing to be said for the yel­low­ing charm of its dust­bowl land­scape and ram­shackle ​’70s aes­thet­ic, as sham­bol­ic DC rat­tles around his decrepit theme park (run large­ly by teenagers) try­ing to dream up new lethal attrac­tions to com­pete with the cor­po­rate mega-park threat­en­ing to steal his clien­tele. It’s all a lit­tle reac­tionary, harken­ing back to some sort of myth­i­cal gold­en age in Amer­i­ca, when kids were kids and nobody wor­ried about ​“polit­i­cal correctness”.

At least Knoxville’s per­sis­tent charm steers the vehi­cle away from com­plete­ly enter­ing con­ser­v­a­tive MAGA ter­ri­to­ry. Audi­ences may notice the wrin­kles around his eyes, or clock the way he doesn’t get up quite as quick­ly after a stunt any­more (Knoxville has stat­ed he was injured more dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of Action Point than in any of his pre­vi­ous films), but his com­mit­ment to the craft of self-inflict­ed injury lives on.

Going between stu­pid stunts and soul-search­ing father-daugh­ter reflec­tions, one won­ders if Knoxville – who devel­oped the sto­ry, though not the screen­play – is reflect­ing on his own lega­cy as much as he is that of the real-life Action Park. Even old Jack­ass pal Chris Pon­tius turns up as a thin­ly-dis­guised ver­sion of himself.

A late scene hints at the unbri­dled car­nage which made the Jack­ass trilogy’s open­ing and clos­ing sequences so mem­o­rable, but on the whole, the stunt­work fails to quite hit the mark. The jokes are child­ish and over­ly famil­iar, and the sto­ry itself a pre­dictable jaunt. It’s a hard film to hate, though, if only for the ener­gy which its lead­ing man brings to every­thing he does.

While Knoxville has ded­i­cat­ed his life to the anni­hi­la­tion of his own body through any means nec­es­sary, there’s some­thing strange­ly melan­choly about Action Point. It inad­ver­tent­ly con­firms that you too will one day pass on into antiq­ui­ty, and the only tan­gi­ble proof of your achieve­ments will be the peo­ple you leave behind. To quote Blink-182, whose music was released in par­al­lel to Knoxville’s pièce de résis­tance, ​“I guess this is grow­ing up.”