Bad Grandpa By Brenton Thom BAD GRANDPA is an MTV movie starring Johnny Knoxville that takes one of the “Jackass” characters and develops a story and pranks around him. The movie's about 86-year-old Irving Zisman, newly “free” as his wife of 46 years has finally died. He wants to take this new freedom to spread his loins and live like a bachelor again. But when his crack-whore daughter goes to prison he is left with his grandson, Billy. Not wanting the responsibility of watching his grandson and feeling “cock-blocked” by the 9-year-old, he decides to leave the kid with his son-in-law across the country. This story is basically a road trip with the grandfather and his grandson, with pranks and hidden camera gags along the way involving real people, similar to what we saw in BORAT or BRUNO - a narrative story mixed in with hidden camera gags. Right off the bat, you have to commend the makeup artists for the work they did on Johnny Knoxville. He does look like an old man, and does fool a bunch of people the entire way across the road trip. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a nomination for the makeup at the Oscars. I also give props to Knoxville for going under the long hours of makeup for that role. Technicalities aside, the movie is decent. I’m not saying it’s a great film, but it does have its laughs. A lot of the jokes you see in the movie are in the trailer, so it was kind of spoiled in the marketing a little bit. But I was surprised that a lot of the humor I thought was funny was the stuff not in the trailers, the stuff that they couldn’t show, primarily Grandpa’s or the little boy’s rebuttals and one liners to people. Those were funny. There are a few physical jokes and gags that were great that they didn’t know in the trailers, as well. But overall, it's a semi-funny movie that does try to have a happy ending, and that’s one thing I want to point out that I’ve noticed with Knoxville. He started doing toilet humor stuff and physical injury comedy, but over the years, he's tried to create movies with more meaning and heart behind them. It was first noticed in THE RINGER and then at the end of JACKASS 3D. The ending of JACKASS 3D felt like it was the conclusion. All the friends that worked together all these years and had grown older together had finished their painful shenanigans and it wrapped up the program. So, it was no surprise that the ending of BAD GRANDPA was almost a tear-jerker and had heart in the way the relationship developed between grandfather and grandson. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend this movie to everybody, but if you want a laugh with your friends, I’d recommend watching this movie with a large crowd. I was fortunate enough to see this movie in a packed cinema and the audience reaction is also what made it enjoyable. All in all, though, you could wait for video and a night with your friends for a few laughs.
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