Jack­ass Forever

Some­times, when I can’t sleep, I think about what will remain of me when I die. What will peo­ple remem­ber? What will peo­ple say? What images, or videos, or words from my three decades shuf­fling around the third rock from the sun will endure beyond my passing?

There’s a line from Chuck Palahniuk’s 2003 nov­el ​‘Diary’ that I think of: ​“We all die. The goal isn’t to live for­ev­er, the goal is to cre­ate some­thing that will.” Of course, it’s impos­si­ble to pre­dict what our ances­tors will one day remem­ber from our cul­ture. Maybe the heat death of the uni­verse will ren­der all of this a moot point before it real­ly mat­ters. But Jack­ass – that gross-out MTV main­stay that has endured for two decades – implies a cer­tain longevi­ty with the cheeky title of its fourth fea­ture film. Jack­ass For­ev­er. Who am I to disagree?

It has been ten years since Jack­ass 3D pushed the lim­its of cam­era tech­nol­o­gy to poke slo-mo dil­dos into the face to the mass­es. Now, the gang are back for anoth­er 93 min­utes of car­nage. Old­er, grey­er, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly wis­er, John­ny Knoxville, Steve‑O, Chris Pon­tius and their mer­ry band of co-con­spir­a­tors return, along with some fresh new faces – Zach Holmes, Jasper Dol­phin, Sean ​“Poop­ies” McIn­er­ney, Erik Man­a­ka and Rachel Wolfson.

The pranks are as lewd and crude as ever, the cast are nude, yet against all rea­son and sense, there’s some­thing incred­i­bly whole­some about the entire affair. After film­ing shut down dur­ing the pan­dem­ic (and then again a few times due to cast injury), the mag­ic is still very much intact: there’s no sense of going through the motions with these ras­cals. They look as stoked to be caus­ing mis­chief as they were in their MTV glo­ry days.

An often-over­looked ele­ment of the Jack­ass films is their tech­ni­cal artistry. Here slow-motion tech­nol­o­gy is utilised bet­ter than in most mod­ern block­busters, and cam­era angles catch the gran­u­lar detail of bod­i­ly car­nage. They might be record­ing scor­pi­on stings or grown men get­ting hit in the balls with hock­ey pucks, but the team behind Jack­ass (direc­tor Jeff Tremaine, cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Dim­it­ry Elyashke­vich and a cam­era crew that includes Lance Bangs, Chris ​“Raab Him­self” and Rick Kosick) put a lot of thought and atten­tion into the cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence. Regard­less of the mileage one gets out of bod­i­ly flu­ids and pain endurance, there’s no accus­ing the cre­ative team of slack­ing off.

This seems most evi­dent in the set-up of stunts. From the film’s Godzil­la-themed open­ing sequence to an incred­i­ble prank enti­tled ​‘Silence of the Lambs’, the cast are as fool­hardy as ever, and their new friends are just as game for a laugh. The MVPs include Jasper’s dad, Comp­ston ​“Dark­shark” Wil­son, described as an ex-con, ex-gang­banger, who has a fear of insects, and a cameo from musi­cian Tyler the Cre­ator who gives Jack­ass For­ev­er one of its great­est lines of dia­logue. These sup­port­ing play­ers add a sense of com­mu­ni­ty around the Jack­ass gang – friends and fam­i­ly who are equal­ly up for get­ting down and dirty in the name of comedy.

The pan­dem­ic has changed the way many of us live and com­mu­ni­cate. Friend­ships have frac­tured under the strain of iso­la­tion and mis­in­for­ma­tion. We’ve all turned to com­fort shows and films to pro­vide some tem­po­rary respite, and Jack­ass is no excep­tion. There is some­thing inher­ent­ly com­fort­ing about the famil­iar­i­ty of MTV’s endur­ing export, but there’s also some­thing ten­der in see­ing a group of friends reunite on the big screen, chem­istry ful­ly intact. Fame may have changed them, but at the same time, it’s changed noth­ing at all. Chris Pon­tius still needs no excuse to get naked. Steve‑O is still being cat­a­pult­ed through the air in a por­taloo. Most per­ti­nent, no mat­ter how much they goof on each oth­er, is that the Jack­ass gang are always there with a hug and a clap on the back for a stunt game­ly undertaken.

In the age of the pre­quel, sequel, remake and she­make, Jack­ass For­ev­er deliv­ers exact­ly what you expect (with a few wel­come sur­pris­es along the way). The only weak­ness is the endur­ing reliance on ani­mals for stunts: while a scene involv­ing a tame bear is amus­ing, it seems cru­el to be bait­ing scor­pi­ons and snakes in the present age, espe­cial­ly when the crew are clear­ly fun­ny and ball­sy enough to come up with plen­ty of pranks that don’t rely on the involve­ment of animals.

It’s one thing for a per­son to con­sent to a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion, but an ani­mal can’t pro­vide that, and putting them in stress­ful sit­u­a­tions in the name of laughs feels increas­ing­ly unnec­es­sary. This is the only real stum­bling block the film faces, along­side the slight­ly lack­lus­tre addi­tion of Rachel Wolf­son, who doesn’t quite seem to have the chem­istry the rest of the cast share, which might be down to her lim­it­ed screen-time or back­ground as a come­di­an rather than a prankster.

Is it like­ly to con­vert any naysay­ers? Well, no. Either you find phys­i­cal com­e­dy fun­ny, or you think it’s all a bit… juve­nile. But in a packed cin­e­ma, sur­round­ed by peo­ple who have com­mit­ted to the car­nage as much as you, it’s the most com­mu­nal joy I’ve expe­ri­enced in months – a pure endor­phin rush fuelled by those bold enough to push the lim­its of human endurance.

It brings to mind reports of how the audi­ence react­ed when the Lumière broth­ers cap­tured the arrival of a train at La Cio­tat sta­tion, and leg­end has it peo­ple screamed and ran to the back of the room. At Jack­ass For­ev­er, audi­ences mem­bers hoot­ed and hollered, gasped and cried out. It was a beau­ti­ful sight to behold.

This is, to me, what Get Back was to peo­ple who love The Bea­t­les – a chance to relive a bygone era, to bear wit­ness to idols who have shaped such a large part of my life, and appre­ci­ate that, yeah, it’s sil­ly, but silli­ness doesn’t pre­clude thought­ful­ness. This com­fort­ing, crass blast from the past con­firms the Jack­ass gang as mod­ern-day leg­ends. Pan­demics come and go. The tides turn and pop cul­ture trends live and die on the whim of social media. But Jack­ass? Baby, Jack­ass is Forever.

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