Jackass Forever is … a cinematic masterpiece that will end the pandemic and cure political division?
Maybe!
The latest entry from the bawdy stunt ensemble is getting the best reviews in the franchise’s history by far.
The film, released in theaters Friday, currently has a 90 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Compare that to the first entry in the series, 2000’s Jackass, which only managed a 49 percent score. The sequels fared a bit better as the critic class warmed — a little — to Johnny Knoxville and his gang, with 2006’s Jackass: Number Two garnering a 64 percent and 2010’s Jackass 3 a 66 percent.
What’s perhaps more striking than the numbers for Jackass Forever (and the film’s audience score is an unsurprisingly high 95 percent positive), are some of the superlatives being thrown about.
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The Daily Beast declared that Jackass Forever was “the masterpiece that will unite America.”
Another writer, at The Shiznit, had a similar reaction, writing that Jackass Forever is “a film that can unite every country, every culture, every political leaning. … [It] provides the relief we so desperately need following two years of global hardship. It’s a solution for the general societal malaise from which we’re all suffering. It might even hold the cure for the coronavirus itself. … Right now, this is the tonic we all need.”
The Associated Press referenced Hollywood’s superhero glut, calling the film “a rollicking antidote to the beautiful, unblemished people who play superheroes that never so much as bleed.”
The New York Times called it “deceptively kindhearted” and wrote about “the crew’s friendship, which is evident as they egg on the wounded and apply a healing salve of applause in nearly every scene. Bones get brittle. The heart muscle remains strong.”
Rolling Stone says it’s “more of the same dick jokes, insane stunts and bodily harm, … which is why it’s fucking great.”
The Washington Post says, “the stunts are masterfully dumb. … Their message? Pain is universal, and inevitable. All you need are kindred spirits to laugh at the futility of thinking otherwise.”
The Daily Globe and Mail critic said they “watched a good deal of it while either covering my eyes, gritting my teeth, grimacing so hard that my jaw snapped, yelping in half-mock terror, suppressing the urge to throw up or laughing maniacally.”
Mashable wrote, “Alive inside us is not just an inner child, but an inner twentysomething who still finds intense pleasure in dick jokes, dumb stunts, and the joys of being a jackass. Jackass Forever is a celebration of the blurry line between youth and adulthood, and how it’s totally worth shitting all over. … And slap-dick is comedy gold.”
The Bulwark declared they “haven’t laughed this hard in a theater in years.”
There are some differences this time around, the reviews noted.
The crew is older, and feeling their age and battle wounds, which adds slightly more depth to the hijinks (Knoxville has said this will be his final outing in the franchise). There are also some people of color on board with rapper Jasper Dolphin and skateboarder Eric Manaka. And the crew also has its first woman, comedian Rachel Wolfson, who Knoxville recruited off Instagram (“Basically they were like, ‘Do you want to come play with us?’ Wolfson told Indiewire. “Jackass is really body positive. There’s nothing sexual about it. It’s purely art and comedy. And I think that there’s something comforting to that, to know that what’s happening is so non-threatening, it’s just comical.”)
One fan-favorite, however, Bam Margera, is almost entirely absent after being fired from the sequel due to alleged substance abuse issues, and has sued Knoxville, Paramount Pictures and MTV Networks, while Ryan Dunn died in a drunken driving accident in 2011.
Not every critic was impressed with the result, however.
The Times U.K. sniffed that the film was “an unwelcome return for toxic idiocy.”
And The Hollywood Reporter wrote, “It’s particularly disheartening to see Knoxville, who has proven his talent in other projects, still engaging in such tomfoolery.”
