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The former MTV cult returns for a fourth, and perhaps final, insane stunt show: Jackass Forever is as fun and clever as ever.
There seems to be a great need to talk about penises. At least so far hardly any review of “Jackass Forever” can do without at least mentioning the genital torture excesses that can be seen in the fourth cinematic adventure of the stunt group led by Johnny Knoxville. Understandable! This ordeal is inherent in the greatest attraction of the film. She really forces herself on you, you can’t get past her. Of course, the male genitalia has played a major role in the long history of “Jackass” since the MTV days, but in this episode it literally takes on a bigger role.
How can one even talk about “Jackass” today? How does this lovingly naïve and infinitely brutal experimentation, punishment and torment fit into current cultures of discourse, which in times of crisis exhaust themselves by working in vain on the “toxic masculinity” of Vladimir Putin? Perhaps “Jackass Forever” is actually the consistently absurd answer to this: as eccentric castration theater.
The best Godzilla movie in years
Right at the beginning, New York is invaded by a monster that, on closer inspection, turns out to be the actor’s penis in disguise Chris Pontius revealed in a miniature model. An oversized dwarf reduces the city to rubble and ashes. Of course – as befits a real “Godzilla” flick – he is also confronted by a second monster. To reveal more would spoil a successful punchline at this point. In any case, this fourth screen appearance of the “Jackass” troupe makes every effort to extract any potential for deconstruction from the penis in the usual tightrope walk between torture chamber, fakir show and school trip for the 10b.
It is misused to the point of grotesqueness, for example used as a ping-pong racket, wedged between two sheets of Plexiglas. Various sports, all too often associated with masculinity cults, warlike substitute valves, are turned into destructive or are thereby exhibited in their core: in a never-ending montage Danger Ehrens Soft parts punched, thrown, shot, squeezed with a pogo stick. Fears of castration are played out on the screen right down to the bleeding scrotum, as if one were longing for the ultimate overcoming of instincts.
Celebration of the useless
Anyway, “Jackass Forever” proves that after all these years this series is still a virtuoso unicum when it comes to creating highly intense moments of suspense in the cinema, simply in the draping of bodies that face their self-imposed suffering. It is again an attempt to liberate oneself from constricting narratives, from offensively exhibited intellect, in order to create large images with affects, instincts, flesh, limbs, excretions. “So many books, so little time” is mockingly emblazoned across Danger Ehren’s t-shirt in one scene as he’s tied to a chair and a grizzly bear nibbles at his fly.
In this respect – one can interpret this as both praise and criticism – everything is actually the same. The performers’ hair has only turned a little grayer and when they vomit, a denture falls out of their mouths. Also in 2022, “Jackass” shows artistic self-harm as a sovereign act against rationalization, calculability, the urge for optimization and training.
Man as a useful working being celebrates the useless and the waste. Fear of risk is overcome in destruction. Start-up ideology and stardom lead to nonsense. In a ridiculously elaborate experiment, a machine is to be used to ignite a fart underwater – “Jackass” makes history. A dance choreography as a body-mechanical self-discipline surrenders to chaos – the floor is electrified. Finally, an infantile showdown along the lines of “whoever throws up first, loses!” is overshadowed by explosions, tanks and soldiers. War and annihilation suddenly break out into the naïve playfulness – these days, these childish things take on a completely different flavor.
Is Jackass Overtaken by the Internet?
Of course, all the dares, pranks and escapades are not good for a great revolt again, although they have hardly lost any of their inventiveness. The realization of the human commodity character and the undermining of it had already found its brilliant image in the opening of the very first “Jackass” movie, when the ensemble rolls down the street in an oversized shopping trolley and crashes into market stalls. Although there is little new to wring from it in the meantime, everything has only gotten worse – the series has not lost its timelessness.
Recently, it was often asked whether the network and social media culture had long since surpassed the self-experiments of the Knoxville gang and reduced them to absurdity. That may be true, but it’s still surprising that “Jackass Forever” stays true to its lineage so effortlessly. Currying favor with zeitgeist is alien to him, he insists on the possibilities of cinema as a place of the extraordinary. Above all, this is a decidedly film about filmmaking. The shooting process itself becomes an attraction. It’s always about finding the perfect setting, about rooms that suddenly turn out to be decals and backdrops, about dummies and sets whose illusions crumble.
A Hollywood satire
Incidentally, “Jackass Forever” can be read as a cynical caricature of the current “Legacyquel” trend. In films like “Ghostbusters: Legacy” or “Scream”, Hollywood tries to revive the characters and core substance of old series and bring them together with new figures in order to pave the way for the future. Also in “Jackass Forever” come new additions to the well-known group. They fit in seamlessly, demonstrating a certain interchangeability in universal pain. But basically they all remain pale, seem like fresh meat that only endures hardships, as if they wanted to become a member of an obscure fraternity. In the meantime, the rapper Machine Gun Kelly appears: a bland imitator and young star, who is given a consistent XXL bang. When the old ones resign, so does Jackass!
There can’t be a completely convincing legacyquel in this film universe unless it reinvents itself. It’s just about working through the hopeless, which this film parodies in a hilarious way. “Jackass Forever” constantly strives for useless perfection while enacting a close-up of deliberate failure. You absolutely need a close-up of the pants full of shit, a testicle torture urgently needs to be repeated for the camera, as if the overall result would suffer as a result.
Expose your own end
Repetition is a big keyword in Hollywood and in this work in general. As a technical marvel: Suffering and pain can be studied in fast-forward and rewind slow motion in all the gruesome details. The actions themselves also strive for re-enactments. Old, iconic moments radiate into the present, which are now to be re-enacted in a different form. Some things go well, some experience new twists, other stunts fail due to megalomania.
When Johnny Knoxville fights the bull again and ends up in the hospital with serious injuries, “Jackass” hits a barrier that may only be crossed by suicide. The main thing is that the scene is in the can, everything else doesn’t matter! suffering for art. After all, what dying in front of the camera at retirement age might look like has “Jackass: The Movie“ once presented. This is filming and acting that imposes a recalcitrant, usual ambivalent martyr character. A spectacle company meets its perversely logical end point.
A new Icarus
“Jackass Forever” reactivates the myth of its own parallel world, a utopian and cruel original state that digs for innocence in excess, shamelessness and friendly solidarity. And there is yet another central myth found to this end. He sums up “Jackass” in its satirical potential: Icarus, this is Johnny Knoxville shot into the sky by a cannon to crash over the body of water. “Jackass Forever” once again finds the high-spirited man who believes he is conquering the world and ultimately fails because of the unpredictability of his own body material and his entire existence.
You let the subjugated animals out of their cages and stand face to face with the sluggish flesh that is at the mercy of gravity, or the horrible nature that makes you tremble and shiver. You can never be sure whether this will actually be the last “Jackass” film with Knoxville, Steve-O and Co. Either way, the series doesn’t need a pathetic farewell. It can only end in infinity – the “Forever” in the title already suggests it – and is all the more touching. The collective breaking of taboos and the exploration of diverse vulnerabilities are once again united by pure conviviality. And it seems eternal, captured on film it can’t die at all.
“Jackass Forever” has been in German cinemas since March 10, 2022. The previous parts of the series are up DVD and Blu-ray in trade as well as VoD available. In Jackass 3D you can aktuell stream on Netflix.
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