Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa (2013)

It's Jackass meets Borat, with a little bit of The Man Show Boy and Little Miss Sunshine thrown in.

That's really all there is to Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, the latest from Johnny Knoxville and Co.  Rather than do a straight up Jackass 4, Bad Grandpa has a loose plot stringing the various gags together.  While it's a pretty basic story, I appreciated they actually attempted at one.  It made the film feel less random, and the gags felt like more of a byproduct of the story they were trying to tell.

After the death of his wife, Irving Zisman (Knoxville) is tasked with taking his 8-year-old grandson, Billy (Jackson Nicoll), back to his father.  As they travel across the country, they make various stops where a variety of pranks and stunts are pulled on unsuspecting bystanders.

Unfortunately, some of the best laughs are ruined in the trailer, so the less you've seen of it, the better.  Even knowing those scenes were coming, it made me smile when hearing the audience's reaction.  There were still plenty of moments that I got a good laugh out of, or got me rocking in my seat.  A lot of your enjoyment of Bad Grandpa is going to depend on how much you enjoy fart, shit and dick jokes.  If you're easily grossed out, Bad Grandpa is not the movie for you.  The pranks are a little uneven; some are really inspired, while others are predictable or variations on ones you've seen them do before.  Even if the prank doesn't always hit, the reactions from the witnesses are always great.

As I mentioned earlier, while simple, I actually appreciated the story elements.  It was sweet to see Irving and Billy slowly bond over their journey.  The story by Knoxville, Spike Jonze, and director Jeff Tremaine balanced these elements well.  I never found myself getting bored with the story, and it provided a break from all the hijinx.  If this had just been a string of pranks, then I think it would have gotten old quick.

I actually thought Knoxville was pretty good in the role.  They are doing a great job with the old man makeup these days, but he sells the old man schtick well.  You don't see any times where it looks like Knoxville is on the verge of being identified.  Jackson Nicoll was a real scene stealer.  I don't know much of his dialog was scripted or feeding him lines through an earpiece, but he has pretty good comedic timing.  There's a scene later in the film where he says something that you can tell got a genuine laugh out of Knoxville.  Knoxville and Nicoll had good chemistry and it looks like they were having fun.

One thing that always pops in my mind when watching something like Jackass or Borat is the balls you need to pull this stuff off.  I'd be too afraid of getting my ass kicked going into strange places, approaching people and making inappropriate comments.  It goes to show you what a kid or an old man can get away with that a 35-year-old man wouldn't be able to.  Even still, there's more than one part in Bad Grandpa where you have to assume they had to break character, and let everyone know they were making a movie or things were about to take a really bad turn.  There are some funny moments in the credits where you can see that most were good sports about it once they were let in on the joke.

Bad Grandpa isn't a game changer or really bringing anything new to the table, but it has a good amount of laughs for those that enjoy the type of humor seen in Jackass or Borat.  Grab some friends, a few beers, and check out a matinee.

3.5 (out of 5) Death Stars

The Last Stand (2013) - Movie Review

He's back, and he's really, really old!

Former Governor of California tries his stab at acting...wait a second, let me try this again.  Former action star, turned Governor, returns to the genre that made him famous in The Last Stand.  I have to admit that I was more than a little geeked up to see The Last Stand.  Come on, it's Arnold!  This guy was my idol for a large portion of my youth, and I still go back through his older films on a fairly regular basis.  I don't think I'm alone in saying it's exciting to see him back on the big screen.

Schwarzenegger plays Ray Owens, the sheriff of the small border town of Sommerton Junction, AZ.  He's a former LA cop, which was the movie's way of telling you that he must have been a badass before coming to AZ for a quieter life.  Some quick research showed that there is no actual Summerton Junction in Arizona, but there is a Somerton that's close to the border, so I'm not sure why they didn't just go with that.  Anyway, Sheriff Owens is enjoying a simple day with the goofy locals, like Johnny Knoxville. We learn a little about his deputies, and they appear inept for the most part.  Then again, if Luis Guzmán is one of your deputies, then you're not exactly working with the best of the best.  One wants to transfer because he wants more excitement (so you know he'll be the first to die), and his female deputy had a relationship with the guy that's currently locked up in their lone jail cell.  Whatever, none of it is really important.  Arnold notices a few guys that didn't look right to him (one of which was played by Peter Stormare), and they investigate.

We then meet FBI Agent Bannister (Forest Whitaker) who's overseeing the transfer of a drug kingpin Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega).  It takes almost no time before this transfer is hijacked by various henchmen and Cortez escapes in a fancy, modified sports car.  He's about as generic a bad guy as they come, and you never feel any threat from the guy at all.  He doesn't even carry a gun.  He just drives and offers people large sums of money as bribes.  Yet we're reminded that he's worse than Pablo Escobar, so we're supposed to be scared, I guess.

Speaking of the getaway car, they go out of their way to tell you it can go upwards of 200 mph and that it can outrun a helicopter, which is why they are driving rather than just fly over the border.  But in the very next scene, a helicopter is on the tail of the car and not having any trouble keeping up.  So how does he lose the helicopter?  Does he floor the one-of-a-kind sports car, leaving the helicopter in it's wake?  No, he slams on his breaks and turns his lights off, so the copter can't find them again on the dark, unlit road.  It's a good thing they spent all that time telling us how fast that car was, especially when they don't use that speed in the one situation where it would be useful.  This might be the kind of movie that will bug car enthusiasts, as there are lots of things done that don't make a lot of sense.  You see driving on the wrong side of the road against traffic for no real reason, and there's a 180 that transitions into the car speeding in reverse.  I've always wondered why such an abrupt transition in speed and direction never seems to hurt the car.  Also, don't movie guys know that cars can only go so fast in reverse?  There's no advantage to speeding in reverse, and we see it all too often in movies simply because it's cool looking.  There are some entertaining car chases though, so it's not all bad.  It's just the type of stuff I'm noticing more and more.

This actually has a pretty decent supporting cast, but there's nothing to any of the characters, which seemed like kind of a waste.  Johnny Knoxville isn't in the movie as much as the trailer would have you believe (which is probably a good thing), and Luis Guzmán didn't get many opportunities to provide the kind of comic relief we're used to seeing from him.  Sif from Thor (Jaimie Alexander) plays the only capable deputy at Arnold's disposal, but while there are flashes where you think she might get to be more of a badass, it doesn't play out that way.  Maybe we'll get to see more of her in Thor: The Dark World.  The movie also wastes Genesis Rodriguez as a FBI agent that's kidnapped by Cortez.  I'm anxiously awaiting the film that uses her...um, assets...to their fullest.

The one stand out was Peter Stormare.  If you've been following his career, then you know he either plays a bad guy, a weird guy, or a weird, bad guy.  Here he plays a weird bad guy, and even adopts a bad southern accent (he's Swedish).  He seemed to be having fun with the role though, and managed to keep his accent, which is more than I can say for the Rodrigo Santoro, who played Frank.  We first hear him speaking with a forced sounding American accent (he's from Brazil), as we learn that he's an ex-Marine (they even put a Semper Fi tattoo on his forearm, so we wouldn't be confused about that).  He's some kind of screwup though, as he's in jail for some reason we never learn.  He yells at Sif early on, and his real accent bleeds through. From that point, it's like he said screw it and didn't bother hiding it anymore.

Then again, I'm complaining about realistic accents in a movie that stars a large Austrian man, who's never had the best command of the English language, playing the sheriff of a small town in Arizona.

There's not a lot of attention to detail, which is usually hard for me to overlook.  I'd fault director Jee-woon Kim for this, but he seemed to understand he wasn't making a smart movie here, and did a good job of making the kind of action film we've come to expect form Arnold.  The movie is paced well and when the action gets going, it's actually pretty fun.  The violence is sprinkled with humor, so you never take it too seriously and just go with it.

Arnold can still carry a movie, but I'd like to see him change pace a little.  There's the inevitable showdown at the end of the film, and I couldn't help but thinking that he looked like a top-heavy action figure that you just managed to finally balance, but could tip over for any reason.  I was curious to see how they'd edit the fight to cover for the fact that he's a 65-year-old man that's lost several steps, and doesn't have that same physicality that made him famous.  They actually did a good job with that final fight scene, and it kind of reminded me more of and old warrior or boxer that may not have his speed, but that power is still there when he needs it.

Despite everything I just said, I still had fun with The Last Stand.  At it's heart it's really no different from any other Schwarzenegger film, and it has all the things we love about them:  cheesy one-liners, silly humor, lots of guns and violence, and a simple story.  If that's your cup of tea (Arnold would say you need to drink beer), then I think you'll enjoy The Last Stand.

3 (out of 5) Death Stars