If we’ve learnt anything from watching the viral popularity of NBA stud Kyrie Irving’s Uncle Drew spots for Pepsi it’s that people sure do love watching skits about young people pretending to be old people doing young people things. Jackass embraces this idea wholesale in the U.S. prank collective’s new film Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa constructing the bare bones for a semi-scripted feature length film by reprising one of the most loveable characters in their arsenal. In this case, Bad Grandpa, the one involving their masochistic fearless leader and actor with the highest pain and shame threshold in Hollywood, Johnny Knoxville, wearing an old man suit and pretending to be a surly 86 year old dude with questionable child-rearing skills.
But this time it’s slightly different. Instead of functioning and feeling like a disconnected series of bits and skits, narrative cohesion is achieved through a scripted odd couple road trip co-penned by Knoxville, Spike Jonze and director Jeff Tremaine, following morally ambiguous octogenarian Irving Zisman as he takes his pudgy 8 year old grandson Billy on a road trip across America and mortifies bystanders in the process. But like Michael Bay/adult films no one’s watching this for the plot. The trailer gives us a tantalising glimpse at the money shots: a sloppy wedding crashing scene that ends in tears, funeral hijinks and a Little Miss Sunshine-esque dance sequence involving a boy pretending to be a girl at a child’s beauty pageant and stripping to “Cherry Pie” while his grandpa makes it rain.
Here’s the synopsis: “86 year-old Irving Zisman is on a journey
across America with the most unlikely companion, his 8 year-old Grandson
Billy in “Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa”. This November, the signature
Jackass character Irving Zisman (Johnny Knoxville) and Billy (Jackson
Nicholl) will take movie audiences along for the most insane hidden
camera road trip ever captured on camera. The duo will encounter male
strippers, disgruntled child beauty pageant contestants (and their
equally disgruntled mothers), funeral home mourners, biker bar patrons
and a whole lot of unsuspecting citizens.”
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa is slated for release October 25, 2013
