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Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa Movie Review

Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa is a 2013 comedy film directed by Jeff Tremaine and starring Johnny Knoxville and Jackson Nicoli. It’s the best entry in the series.

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“My Spanish name is El Mucho Ding-Dong“

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86-year-old Irving Zisman takes a trip from Nebraska to North Carolina to take his 8 year-old grandson, Billy, back to his real father. This is by far the only movie in this franchise with a true story. It’s not a particularly great or complex story of course, but at least by having a somewhat loose framing narrative it felt more like a real film instead of a collection of gags that the other entries suffered from.

It also holds the distinction for being the only Jackass flick with just Knoxville and no other cast members present. I did miss some of them and Knoxville can be hit-or-miss when given a full feature treatment, but the addition of a kid played by Jackson Nicoli really elevated the material at hand.

Yes, he actually was funnier than Knoxville was here to be honest. Knoxville plays his grandpa character from the previous movie and he is very funny in certain moments, especially when talking about his dead wife and during uncomfortable sexual situations. However, at other times he felt both repetitive and far from funny due to some gags being weaker than others.

Nicoli, however, fares much better. It is always hilarious to hear a child speak profanities and be extremely honest, which is exactly how this kid behaved throughout the movie. He easily got the best dialogue of the two and what he was saying to women in particular was so amusing.

Bad Grandpa is an uneven movie. The directing is problematic as Tremaine has the tendency to cut away from some amazing gags way too quickly while focusing on weaker ones for too long. The movie also features a very odd chirpy soundtrack that did not go in line with the gags on screen all that well.

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The story could have been better crafted and more thematically rich (it’s no ‘Borat’ of course), but at least the movie had one in the first place. The Middle America setting also lent it a lot of interesting perspectives while the reactions from the onlookers stole the show at times. The pageant section was the best one undoubtedly.

Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa is easily the best entry in this comedy franchise. It holds the distinction of being the only Jackass movie with a framing narrative, and although it was slight, at least the movie had one. The gags are wildly uneven, but those that worked were hilarious. It’s also interesting that the kid stole the show from Knoxville himself as his lines of dialogue were frequently hilarious.

My Rating – 3.5