Very Bad Men

If there's one brand of popular entertainment I've never fully been able to get behind, it's the Jackass series with its plethora of stupid stunts, dirty jokes, and bad behavior. It's a series that still sharply divides audiences even after more than a dozen years, and many people I know and otherwise respect can't get enough of the antics of Johnny Knoxville and his crew. Now Jackass is spinning itself off, centering its fourth (FOURTH) feature film around the team's favorite ill-tempered geriatric in Bad Grandpa.

In this actual narrative by series creator and regular Jackass director Jeff Tremaine, Irving Zisman (Knoxville under a ton of makeup and prosthetics) is charged with getting his grandson Billy (Fun Size's Jackson Nicoll) across country to live with his father after the death of Irving's wife and the incarceration of his daughter. What follows is an incredible trip between Nebraska and North Carolina, in which Irving and Billy steal from convenience stores, destroy public property, act inappropriately at a male strip club, infiltrate a child beauty pageant, and risk the ire of a biker gang, all for cheap laughs from their audience and the surprise of those unaware people around them.

I've got a bad feeling about this...

One of the best aspects of the series' Zisman character is that, unlike many of Jackass' usual stunts, his antics are played against normal folk going about their business, unaware of Knoxville's identity. That's the goal of Bad Grandpa, to shock and surprise anybody who is not part of the (hidden) film crew, and by extension amuse the viewer with bewildered looks and moments of anger and revulsion. It's a theme that works, for the most part; some of the best moments are when spectators are frozen in surprise as Irving's dead wife (Spike Jonze, who also co-produced and co-wrote the story) topples out of a casket at a funeral home, or when Zisman gets his penis caught in a vending machine. Knoxville of course has been doing this for a decade, and knows his way around when it comes to catching people off guard. But it's Nicoll who steals the show, the young actor regularly out-acting and out-funny-ing his elder statesman, especially in the scenes in which it was definitely required. After all, few people might have actually recognized Knoxville with all that makeup on, but Fun Size - while a failure commercially - was still advertised and seen enough that many people might have still recognized the kid otherwise.

The implications are staggering.

Naturally the story between pranks is completely unoriginal. Between the road trip, the dead grandparent in the trunk (which ought to have been visited more often), an the beauty pageant strip tease (which is by far the best scene of the movie), Bad Grandpa was definitely written by men who had just seen Little Miss Sunshine (trading Rick James for Warrant doesn't differentiate things much). When you get past all the pranks and stupidity, the story goes exactly where you would expect from more traditional films. The truth is that Tremaine and crew aren't used to making this kind of film, and to expect a cohesive, let alone original, narrative from them would be a mistake. Still, I'm fairly sure Jackass fans aren't looking for that anyway, so their attention will simply wander in those moments while they await the next genuine moment of amusement.

That's one effed-up penguin.

Still - and I'm shocked to say this myself - Bad Grandpa might just be the best thing to come out of the Jackass brand. Sure, there aren't a ton of genuine laugh-out-loud moments; at best most scenes will merely illicit chuckles, and those funniest moments are all in the trailer. Bad Grandpa also lacks the wild, unpredictable nature of the series by limiting what they can do with their mediocre story. But Knoxville, Tremaine and company were never out to make groundbreaking fare, and those who are already fans of the truly unique genre will certainly find enough to feast upon. Anybody else, however, won't find enough to justify the ticket price, though at least this one doesn't go for the extra 3D price hike like its underwhelming predecessor.

He's Back!

It’s been a long time since we’ve really been able to enjoy an “Ahnold” performance. After his last starring role in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, longtime Hollywood action hero Arnold Schwarzenegger stepped away from the spotlight. For the time being, he was performing in a whole new capacity after the 2003 recall election named him the Governor of California in what was just the second instance of a sitting Governor being removed from power. During his two terms in office, Schwarzenegger rarely appeared on the big screen but for cameos, including the crowd-pleasing turns as antihero Trench in the fun and entertaining The Expendables and its sequel The Expendables 2. But for those who still get the giggles watching his classic titles, his return to stardom came this past weekend in the form of The Last Stand, the American debut of South Korean director Kim Ji-woon.

The action begins in Las Vegas, where dangerous criminal kingpin Gabriel Cortez (played to type by Eduardo Noriega) escapes the armored custody of the FBI and chief agent John Bannister (Forest Whitaker), takes another agent hostage, and escapes recapture in one of the fastest sports cars in the world. Easily evading law enforcement and blowing right through roadblocks, his escape across the border is all but guaranteed. The only thing standing in his way? Sheriff Ray Owens (Schwarzenegger), whose small town of Summerton Junction lies directly in the path of the fleeing showcase Chevrolet. Despite being counted out by both sides of the law, Owens won’t stand aside and let this crime lord pass through the place he was sworn to protect.

Man, Thor really let himself go...

Like the aging action star comeback Expendables series, The Last Stand relies heavily on three aspects that make it work. Two of them, violence and humor, go almost hand in hand. The best action movies you will ever see, whether they earned their fierce R ratings or are the more family-friendly PG-13 type, will always mix quips and kills with exquisite precision. Too often action becomes the sole focus of the product, and while that might make for some pretty visuals, it doesn’t entertain as much as it should. Whether the humor is merely bad (Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise, anyone?) or conspicuously absent (anything by Len Wiseman), many modern action films seem to forget that their job is to entertain an audience fully. The Last Stand delivers on both counts, the first served by gratuitous blood splatter via bullets, explosives and other weapons that probably shouldn’t be held by human hands in most circumstances. In the vein of classic Schwarzenegger films like Conan The Barbarian, Total Recall and Commando, Ji-woon doesn’t let up on the action, each scene a microcosm of condensed violence that elicits cheers from a suitably impressed audience.

Remember when this guy won an Oscar?

The second, that of humor, comes easy in Andrew Knauer’s screenplay. It’s far from a polished script, and most of the dialogue was written with the most cliched of individuals in mind. Then you have the acting, which involves the deliverance of lines by either hammy caricatures (Luis Guzman and Johnny Knoxville), legitimately talented actors who are given less than their worth (Whitaker, Genesis Rodriguez, Rodrigo Santoro, Jaimie Alexander), or Arnold, who appears to have more trouble with the English language than he did twenty years ago. And yet what they have to say actually works on a comedic level; clever quips (though not the best we’ve seen) feel relatively fresh without the glut of stupid action pics that swarmed the theaters in Schwarzenegger’s prime. When the violence is so over the top as to be cartoonish, it reminds you of the good old days. Overall, the humor in the movie simply works a lot better than it had any right achieving.

You don't get much more wooden than these guys.

The final aspect that The Last Stand needed to succeed is nostalgia. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been an industry icon almost since his debut in 1969. He’s played soldiers, barbarians, synthetic constructs, cops, and even a DC comics super-villain (badly). We’ve all secretly (or even overtly) loved hearing his often broken language skills stretched to their absolute limits, and that’s part of the appeal of seeing something like this. The actor plays a pastiche of his grittiest roles and something out of a spaghetti western, and while this isn’t nearly a stretch in terms of characterization, it’s still ultimately appealing to the audience to see this 65 year-old man kick ass and take names after so long an absence. That familiarity is the biggest factor to Stand’s success as a film, and is likely the biggest reason you should bother to go and see it.

The Sheriff shot you; not the Deputy.

Sure, you can find better fare just about anywhere. But this early in 2013 it’s the stupid, fun films that can serve as a counterbalance to the bigger, Oscar-nominated projects that are filling up theaters. If the choice is between The Last Stand or Zero Dark Thirty, the question you need to ask yourself is “how much do I want to use my brain?” While the latter is a pulse-pounding, high-thought masterpiece well worth its ticket price, The Last Stand is a rollicking popcorn film, an exposition of pure escapism that won’t disappoint your inner 16 year-old  boy. It also currently sits at #2 for 2013, not far behind the fun Gangster Squad. While there might be better stuff out there, that’s no reason to pass on this unlikely good time.