Hi I’m Ewan Bickford and welcome to the Guilford Voyager!

   After numerous delays, Jackass Forever, the eighth movie in the series, came out on Feb 4, 2022, twelve years after the last installment of the Jackass franchise, Jackass 3D, came out. Even though this movie is the newest installment of the franchise, and the cast has grown up, Jackass Forever is amazing, and it might even top Jackass Number Two. 

   For those of you who aren’t familiar with the franchise, Jackass features a variety of cast members who do their own stunts, and prank each other for laughs. Instead of a movie with characters, these are real people doing real stunts.

   Despite being released twelve years after the last movie, the Jackass crew still know how to do amazing stunts. There are so many funny, incredible parts of the movie. My favorite stunt is “The Magic Trick.” This is a recreation of one of the skits from Jackass Number Two in which Johnny Knoxville gets flipped over by a bull. This time, however, he was injured so badly that he had to be brought to the hospital, which was shown in the movie. He ended up getting broken ribs, broken wrists, a concussion, as well as a brain hemorrhage. 

   Another one of my favorite things that they did in the movie was bringing back “Bad Grandpa.” “Bad Grandpa” has been a part of Jackass for so long, and I am so glad that Knoxville brought it back. I won’t say too much about this “Bad Grandpa” stunt, because it is one of the best parts of the movie.

   One of my other favorite parts of the movie was the  new cast members that they brought in. Jackass Forever brought in so many new people like Zachary Holmes and Eric Manaka. My personal favorite new crew member is Rachel Wolfson. She was able to have a scorpion bite her lip not once, not twice, but three times. She also was able to get her tongue shocked twice. She seemed like she could tolerate the pain much better than even some of the original cast members.

   There are a couple of omissions of crew members in this movie, however. One is due to a death. Ryan Dunn was one of the cast members of the original television series. He got in a car accident at the age of 34. They paid a really good tribute to him at the end of the movie, and it made me sad that he could not have seen it. The other omission, however, involves much more drama and controversy. Bam Margera is one of the original cast members of Jackass. He later became heavily addicted to drugs, and lately, it has gotten much worse. Knoxville said that he could be in the movie if he was able to sober up. Margera would not comply with any breathalyzer tests, and he would not go to rehab. He got fired, and he sued Knoxville as well as Paramount Studios saying that the reason he even got addicted to drugs in the first place was because of Jackass.

   “I did not have any issues with addiction and drug use until I began my involvement…with the Jackass franchise,” Margera wrote in legal documents. “It was not until then that I became dependent on Adderall and pain medications to maintain the focus needed to satisfy the production schedule of Defendants for my various television and motion picture projects and to manage the pain associated with the injuries I suffered performing the stunts in those productions,” (The Blast).

   Knoxville recently broke his silence on Margera’s firing, and I think that he really does want to see him get better. 

   “I don’t want to get into a public back-and-forth with Bam. I just want him to get better,” said Knoxville (GQ).

   Despite the absences of some of my favorite cast members, I enjoyed Jackass Forever. Until recently, my favorite Jackass movie has always been Jackass Number Two. I feel like they got everything right, and it made me laugh the hardest. Jackass Forever is now my favorite. Maybe it’s because it’s the only Jackass movie that I got to see in the theater, or maybe it’s because it shows a more grown-up Jackass cast. All I can say is that it’s my favorite one. The tribute to Dunn, the new cast members making it fun, the amazing stunts, it’s truly perfect. 

   If, like me, you watched the original Jackass and you want to see what they are like today, then this movie is for you. If you just want to go to the movies and have a good time and a good laugh then this movie is for you.

   Jackass Forever is currently only in theaters, but a Blu-Ray release is coming in late April 2022.