Given the nature of its bone-breaking, ball-busting brand of comedy, the phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” feels inappropriate for Jackass. But it’s a formula that needs no fixing, and Jackass Forever is delightful proof — there’s a welcome familiarity to proceedings, right down to its raucous soundtrack of noughties leftovers. And although Jackass is forever tied to that particular moment, there’s a timelessness to its antics, as the “Forever” wistfully indicates. No matter how long it’s been, it’s still simply fun to watch these loveable doofuses falling over, getting blown up, firing themselves out of cannons or getting hit in the face by comically large hands.
An MTV institution that shares as much DNA with early 2000s home-video fuckery as it does with the works of Buster Keaton, Jackass was and remains a surprisingly earnest dedication to the age-old cinematic tradition of the pratfall. There’s a particular acumen even in their everlasting mission to debase themselves, with paradoxically high-concept ideas for nut-shots as in the ‘Dum Dum Game’, a mock gameshow where contestants answer fourth-grade-level questions, under penalty of a spring-loaded flip-flop hitting them in the crotch. Not that all of the jokes are of this exact nature: in fact, they’re incredibly versatile, mixing more straightforward laughs with elaborate, multi-layered set-pieces. In the various non sequiturs and the collapse of the very rules they establish, as well as the camera-crew and director themselves getting caught up in the mayhem, subversions are built into the very structure of their comedy. Some sketches start as one thing before changing into something else entirely, to the delight of the viewer and the horror of its participants.
The Jackass movies are as much a showcase of lifelong friendships as they are of bodily fluids and stupid dares.
There’s no denying that Forever eases off the throttle slightly compared to its predecessors. Johnny Knoxville and co are getting older, after all. While there’s young, new blood for the slapstick sacrament — including Jasper Dolphin, one-time member of the hip-hop collective Odd Future — there’s something of an elegiac undertone to proceedings, as the film threads reminders of the crew’s age through various battle scars and missing teeth. In perhaps the clearest indication that the series is reaching the end of the road, director Jeff Tremaine notes the extent of Knoxville’s injuries in the aftermath of a particularly violent stunt, recreating a bit from the original cinematic outing, Jackass: The Movie. There’s a strange poetry to the moment; a brief reflection on the vulnerability of the ageing Jackasses, something emphasised later in side-by-side shots of the older stunts and their recreations in Forever.
With the shared laughter and earnest embraces throughout such moments, it’s a reminder that, amongst all the carnage, there’s a gentleness of spirit to the Jackass movies. They’re as much a showcase of lifelong friendships as they are of bodily fluids and stupid dares, all built on a deep trust between each other that they’ll come through intact — well, mostly.
