Jackass Forever

The art of the grotesque is pushed to new limits of what is watchable – or endurable – in the fourth edition of the series of reality torture-porn-for-laughs.

Just when you think you have seen everything, along comes a film that tests one’s endurance. Except that Jackass Forever isn’t really a film, rather a series of unrelated sketches of men behaving madly. The ringmaster, Johnny Knoxville, spends most of the ‘movie’ laughing his guts out as his trusting troupe of masochists submit themselves to a catalogue of degrading and agonising stunts. Nothing, it seems, is off-limits, no pain too great, no close-up too extreme. And even as we witness the cameraman himself throwing up, Johnny Knoxville continues to scream with delight.

The worrying thing is that there seems to be an audience for such brutality and degradation, as this is the fourth in the Jackass series. But then there is also an appetite for torture porn and other unsavoury aspects of human endeavour tucked away on the Internet. What makes Jackass Forever so disturbing is that the litany of the grotesque is projected on the big screen, rather than in the privacy of one’s bedroom. Masochists of every size and shape are welcome to their pleasure, but why would anybody want to watch it? Jackass Forever is neither cinematic nor funny, just profoundly sickening.

To be fair, there are two sequences not involving naked fat men or body excreta: one in which Rachel Wolfson volunteers to have her lips stung by a scorpion, another in which Johnny Knoxville himself is hospitalized after being knocked down by a bull. He suffered concussion, broken ribs and a broken wrist, but survived to announce that there will be a fifth Jackass film – Jackass 4.5 – to be aired on Netflix this summer. You’re welcome.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Featuring  Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Dave England, Wee Man, Danger Ehren, Preston Lacy, Rachel Wolfson, Poopies, Eric André.

Dir Jeff Tremaine, Pro Jeff Tremaine, Spike Jonze and Johnny Knoxville, Screenplay Andrew Weinberg, Colton Dunn, Derrick Beckles, Eric André, Knate Gwaltney, Nick Kreiss, Sarah Sherman, Johnny Knoxville, Jeff Tremaine and Spike Jonze, Ph Dimitry Elyashkevich, Ed Matthew Kosinski, Matthew Probst and Sascha Stanton-Craven, Music Joseph Shirley.  

MTV Entertainment Studios/Dickhouse Productions/Gorilla Flicks-Paramount Pictures.
96 mins. USA. 2021. US and UK Rel: 4 February 2022. Cert. 18.