Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Jackass Forever’ on Prime Video, One More Genital-Smashing Go-Round for Johnny Knoxville and His Moron Buddies

Now streaming on Prime Video, Jackass Forever is likely to be the final go-round of winceworthy cross-your-legs-on-your-couch genital-trauma-by-proxy from the crew of sadistic/masochistic “pranksters” famous for testing their pain tolerance and audiences’ gag reflexes. A dozen years after Jackass 3-D, ringleader Johnny Knoxville and several of his batshit cohorts – who entered the zeitgeist in the early 2000s by showcasing grossout stunts on MTV series Jackass – reunited for another series of skits showcasing barf, farts, animal excretions, broken bones and abundant male full-frontal nudity, proving that these guys may be older, but they’re sure as hell aren’t any smarter.

JACKASS FOREVER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Inventory: Eight of the original nine Jackassateers are in this movie, with an asterisk next Bam Margera, who’s only in one brief scene, the one in which the guys dress up like a marching band and step onto a speeding treadmill and crash into a bloody heap (Paramount prevented Margera from participating, calling him a liability due to his numerous personal and legal issues). This is one of the more tame bits in the movie, but also, go figure, one of the funnier ones, because it adheres to a less-is-more aesthetic. Anyway, there are five newcomers here, one named “Poopies,” brought in perhaps to lighten the injury burden on the aging originals, perhaps to assume the franchise mantel, although that remains to be seen; two are Black and one is female, marking a new era of inclusion for Jackass, and proving that puerile-mindedness is one of the commonalities among all races, creeds and genders.

You will not be surprised to learn that plot is a thing other movies do. There is no overarching narrative in the Jackass movies, which one hesitates to even refer to as “movies.” Like the three other feature-length excursions into suffering, Forever is a collection of seemingly randomly assembled sequences, although a leadoff skit – in which Chris Pontius’ dick and balls are painted to look like Godzilla, puppeteered tromping through a miniature city where it’s battered by wee missiles – offers a level of production value rarely seen in this series. From there, some bits are identified by subtitle (“DUM DUM GAME,” “SCORPION BOTOX”), while others just flow into each other willy-nilly. Perhaps best representative of its almost-genius-level asininity is “CUP TEST,” a section of the movie in which Danger Ehren gets the protective capacity of his athletic cup tested by a speeding hockey puck, a blistering softball pitch and a brutal punch from a UFC heavyweight. One assumes the Jackass men, more gray and wrinkled than we remember them being, are at an age where they’re no longer concerned with their reproductive capabilities.

I dunno, what else do you need to know here? About the beard of bees hanging from Steve-O’s wang? Knoxville getting taken away in an ambulance after being violently creamed by a raging bull? The skateboard dropped in a guillotine device smack onto Steve-O’s shins? Ex-Mythbusters star Tory Bellici concocting a device allowing one to light farts underwater? Tyler, the Creator getting his ass zapped by an electrified piano bench? All the vile closeups you can handle, and an angle I like to call “taint cam”? The two or three times your gag reflex will be tested? The callbacks to “classic” Jackass bits? One thing’s for sure, these loveable dipshits sure are enjoying themselves. But are we?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Borat, Lawrence of Arabia, Pink Flamingos, Citizen Kane, Bad Trip, Raging Bull, Freddy Got Fingered, The Godfather: Part II, The Human Centipede and Vertigo.

Performance Worth Watching: I always root for the animals in these situations – snake, scorpion, bear, vulture, bees, tarantula with giant fangs, pigs milked of their semen – because they usually get to retaliate in response to their subjugation and/or humiliation by biting a human being in a sensitive area or privately delighting in the idea that someone will get doused with their jizz.

Memorable Dialogue: Too many choice one-liners to count. Here are a few:

“Dick pain hurts.”

“The farts aren’t igniting. We need an open flame.”

“Pig cum? I’m a vegetarian!”

Sex and Skin: The least-titillating full-frontal this side of John Waters’ ouevre and the last scene of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.

Our Take: You have to admit, Jackass just might be the best of the laugh-in-spite-of-yourself reality/documentary media ventures. The you’re-not-dumb-enough-to-try-this-at-home-are-you? gags function well partly because often, the victims know something horrible will happen, but don’t know exactly when, therefore generating nervous tension that’s suddenly broken with an inevitable burst of laughter, or relief that the disgusting unpleasantness is finally the f— over. We take a breath, then we’re on to the next diabolically lunatic stunt.

The gags also work thanks to the shameless willingness of the participants to endure great humiliation and physical and/or psychological injury for the sake of entertaining viewers’ reptile brains (and themselves!). Some have purported an “emotional” undercurrent of “brotherhood” occurring among Knoxville and co., which may be true – their laughter at their own and each other’s expense surely bonds them forever. Their laughter is infectious, no doubt, but there is no sentimentality here. Perhaps when these men (and the occasional woman) expose their greatest vulnerabilities, they offer a piece of themselves few are brave enough to share, especially with a camera rolling for posterity.

Such is my attempt to intellectualize this Jackass shit, which is stupid, stupid, stupid. So stupid. I mean. Squashing a man’s penis between two bolted-together pieces of plexiglass and playing paddleball with it? Stupid beyond belief. Also, more than a little funny. And perhaps revelatory in its depiction of the human body’s capacity to endure mutilation and punishment – if you can stomach watching it. Sometimes you just have to laugh to stop yourself from puking.

Our Call: Jackass Forever is more of the same moronic miscellany, comfortingly so. The more things change, the more they stay the same. STREAM IT, but I hope by now you understand that isn’t a broad endorsement.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.