Jackass Forever (2022 | USA | 96 minutes | Jeff Tremaine)
In 2017, UFC’s current heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou shattered the world record for the hardest punch ever recorded, which is said to be the equivalent of 93 horsepower. It would really, truly suck to end up on the wrong end of one of his punches. Yet, for a certain niche of people on the outskirts of show business and their fans, the idea of watching someone take one of Ngannou’s punches to the balls is extremely funny. I am, sadly, one of those people. Pity poor “Danger Ehren” for drawing the short straw and not only having to take a below-the-belt punch from Ngannou, but also a pitch from a professional softball player, a slapshot from an NHL player and another painful event I’ll decline to disclose, all to his nether regions, and only a cup to for protection.
The genius (for lack of a better term) of the Jackass extended universe is not that they brought in Francis Ngannou to test whether an athletic supporter can provide adequate protection against his fierce punches, but that it is likely only the fourth-worst way to sustain a groin injury that’s depicted in Jackass Forever. Steve-O did something at a bee colony that will haunt my nightmares for years to come.
(Most of) the Jackasses are currently hovering around middle-age: Johnny Knoxville is 50, Steve-O 47, Wee-Man 48. Knoxville’s hair is either dark black with a growing bald spot on top or completely silver. For comparison, Danny Glover was forty-one when he said “I’m too old for this shit” in the first Lethal Weapon movie and he was (presumably) never asked to share an enclosed space with a tarantula or give a kiss to a snake with venom that can kill a person.
Very much not to my credit, but no matter how many “Shouts & Murmurs” columns I read in the New Yorker, I’m still a schmuck that will laugh at two extremely overweight men joining forces with gravity to give Wee-Man history’s worst wedgie. I laughed a lot during Jackass Forever. Though, truth be told, not as hard as I laughed when I saw this scene during the third Jackass movie:
For all of the juvenile humor and sucker punches to the balls in the latest installment to the Jackass franchise (and the previous three), I found the movie somewhat endearing. The other day, something came across my Twitter feed that I found depressing, too ephemeral for me to find again but plenty of others that echo the sentiment, but the gist was that a lot of people see adult friendships as transactional and not built to withstand scrutiny from internet strangers. For better or worse, the friendships among the Jackass crew are strong and genuine.
Friends that will help you move or console you after a breakup or pick you up after surgery are special, but friends that will keep you still while lighting your farts on fire underwater or have you chug gallons of pig semen are forever.
Jackass Forever opens in theaters on Friday, February 4.
Image from MTV Films.