I may regret putting this on record, but it hardly seems an overstatement to call “Jackass” impresario Johnny Knoxville a great American talent. He’s got the charisma of a natural-born star, the intelligence to find a niche worth developing and the nerve to do anything necessary to exploit it.
But with “Bad Grandpa,” he just doesn’t go far enough .
Granted, the concept is appropriately distasteful. Knoxville plays 86-year-old Irving Zisman, a randy widower who inherits his dirty-mouthed 8-year-old grandson, Billy (Jackson Nicoll), from his crack-addicted daughter.
Irving’s wife (a very game Catherine Keener) has just died, so he stuffs her in his car trunk and sets off across the country with Billy. With the help of lots of hidden cameras, the two actors do their best to appall real-life bystanders.
This being a “Jackass” production, a pair of confused furniture movers are asked to dispose of Irving’s dead wife. Male strippers find their patience tested when Irving crashes a club and tries to join in. Passersby see Billy getting drunk, or begging for a new dad, or helping Irving remove his private parts from a soda machine. (Some movies budget for great effects. This one went all out on prosthetics.)
Some concepts in the film — written in part by Knoxville and Spike Jonze — are pretty funny, and Knoxville and the perfectly cast Nicoll have great chemistry throughout. But longtime “Jackass” director Jeff Tremaine consistently cuts away too quickly, undermining each joke in order to rush on to the next.
The best of the written scenes finds Billy entering an actual beauty pageant, dressed as a little girl. When he starts acting like a pint-sized stripper, the satire finally hits a “Borat”-level peak. But where Sacha Baron Cohen always has the daring to stand his ground, Tremaine and Knoxville fold. And they do so before we learn how the judges — who are, after all, used to seeing children presented as miniature adults — might have responded.
It’s no surprise, then, that the movie’s real highlights come after the credits, when Knoxville admits his trickery to a range of stunned victims. These candid confessions have an energy and confessionary liveliness that’s lacking in the rest of the film. Any “Jackass” fan will tell you that the best part of any really memorable stunt isn’t the setup. It’s the crash that comes after.
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