Now in cinema : Bad Grandpa
Eighty-six-year-old Irving Zisman and Billy, his grandson, are on a road trip across the United States. Irving is tasked with taking Billy to live with Chuck, his father, after Kimmie, his mother, is jailed. Interspersed with the brief story segments are hidden camera pranks and stunts.In March 2012, Knoxville discussed the possibility of a fourth Jackass movie, saying “we’re keeping our mind open” and “I’ve got 50–60 ideas on top of all the stuff we didn’t get to shoot.”Then in June 2012, it was reported Paramount “registered several domains for a film that would be called Jackass 4: Bad Grandpa.” During Margera’s September 18, 2012 interview on The Howard Stern Show about Jackass he said: “There’s going to be a whole movie about Knoxville’s grandpa character.” The film was officially announced on July 17, 2013, and was released on October 25, 2013.
Knoxville revealed he and director Jeff Tremaine had been approached on making a film featuring the Irving Zisman character, but held off as they did not feel a plot consisting of pranking the public would be able to carry an entire film.
Eventually, Tremaine and Knoxville came up with a story to structure the pranks around.The first scene shot featured Irving enraging golfers on a Columbus, Ohio course, where he was working as a groundskeeper. “At that point all of my hesitancy just washed away,” Knoxville said. “We got so much funny stuff that we knew we had something special.”
The Irving Zisman makeup took three hours to apply to Knoxville. Five hours were needed for scenes requiring Knoxville to remove his shirt. Jackson Nicoll was cast as Billy, Irving Zisman’s grandson. Knoxville cast Nicoll after working with him on the 2012 film Fun Size. “Jackson would just follow me on the set and verbally assault me while hitting me in the zipper,” Knoxville said. “I was just shaking my head thinking that this kid is a piece of work. He’s unbelievable. I think he was sent from heaven.”
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Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa has received generally positive reviews from critics. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 61% approval rating with an average rating of 5.4/10 based on 77 reviews. The site’s consensus reads: “Never quite as funny as it wants to be, Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa still offers viewers the timeless pleasures of seeing an old man get his privates stuck in a vending machine.” Another review aggregator, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated a score of 54 based on 29 reviews.
Ashley Clark of Time Out gave the film two out of five stars, saying “In Bad Grandpa, there’s no shock value: the physical comedy is down to a minimum, replaced by a creaking humour almost as dated as Zisman himself.” Scott Foundas Variety gave the film a positive review, saying “Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa shows there’s still comic life in this decade-old franchise – provided, of course, the sight of a senior citizen getting his penis caught in a vending machine is the kind of thing that brings a smile to your face.” Amy Nicholson of LA Weekly gave the film a C, saying “The joke is really on Knoxville, who, despite flinging himself through a glass wall and rigging up a fake poo-sprayer in his pants, gets fewer laughs than his boy sidekick.” Elizabeth Weitzman of New York Daily News gave the film a negative review, saying “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.” Michael O’Sullivan of The Washington Post gave the film two out of four stars, saying “Although we’re allowed the perverse pleasure of watching Irving commit one inappropriate act after another, our sense of horror/delight dissipates after each one.” Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle gave the film two out of four stars, saying “Some of the pranks are masterfully executed;
the beauty pageant and a disastrous funeral near the beginning stand out. But on the whole, Bad Grandpa can’t locate a consistent groove.” Peter Keough of The Boston Globe gave the film three out of four stars, saying “Though at times it grows predictable and more inane than outrageous, Bad Grandpa gets more than its share of cheap laughs.” Colin Covert of the Star Tribune gave the film four out of four stars, saying “Bad Grandpa has the thrill of a dirty joke, brilliantly told. This film is emphatically not for everyone, but if it’s not for you, too bad.” Scott Bowles of USA Today gave the film three out of four stars, saying “Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa not only stands as the best installment (by bounds) of Johnny Knoxville’s hidden-camera franchise; it’s one of the sharpest comedies of the year.” Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times gave the film three and a half stars out of five, saying “It’s hard to score big laughs with hidden-camera material these days because there has been so much of it since the “Jackass” TV show, but Mr. Knoxville and his young sidekick still land a few jaw-droppers.” Alonso Duralde of The Wrap gave the film a positive review, saying “When the three-act structure gets shoved to the side for fun and games, Bad Grandpa delivers some of the heartiest laughs I’ve had all year.”
Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times gave the film three and a half stars out of five, saying “The film has a story complete with a beginning, middle and end. It has some acting and emotion. And most shocking of all – it has empathy.” Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B–, saying “You’ll occasionally laugh out loud, but the heart of the movie is safe enough to chuckle at.” Sam Adams of Time Out New York gave the film two out of five stars, saying “Apart from a handful of physical stunts and the penultimate biker-bar setup, Knoxville never puts himself at risk, and the imbalance of power curdles the imperative to laugh at the rubes.” Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film two and a half stars out of four, saying “It’s not really a movie. It’s Johnny Knoxville and his Jackass crew faking out real people into believing he’s 86-year-old Irving Zisman, an old fart bag traveling cross-country.” Linda Barnard of the Toronto Star gave the film one and a half stars out of four, saying “Fans of the MTV series and related flicks will be quite entertained by this latest extrusion from the Jackass factory. But like the lime-green bingo dabber contents Irving drinks down to the horror of his seatmates, it’s an acquired taste.” R. Kurt Osenlund of Slant Magazine gave the film a half a star out of four, saying “A choppy, feature-length progression of crude, predictable gags, Bad Grandpa plays like a variety show, and yet its main attraction is barely funny enough to warrant his own brief sketch.” Amy Nicholson of The Village Voice gave the film a negative review, saying “By Jackass standards, Bad Grandpa is benign it’s neither as fun nor as thrilling as watching Knoxville play tetherball with a beehive.” Steve Rose of The Guardian gave the film three out of five stars, saying “Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat set the bar very high for this type of narrative-driven prankery, and in comparison, Bad Grandpa comes across as disjointed and aimless.” Kyle Ryan of The A.V. Club gave the film a B–, saying “No one will ever mistake the Jackass franchise for good cinema, but it never aspired to that. It was always about allowing the gleeful anarchy of the TV series to escape the constraints of television to be more outrageous, gross, and profane than the FCC would ever allow.”
