The Guardian’s Antidote to America’s Ills
Underneath the leather and grease lurks a moral conscience that remained absent from the remainder of the film. Although probably dismissed as nothing more than outlaws, the Guardian of the Children become a moral beacon in a sea of crass materialism and opportunism. As Chuck complains that he wants Billy in order to get free money from child support, one of the Guardians chastises him, “He’s a hell of a lot more than money.”
The Guardians in many ways stand-in for the Jackass community that populated the earlier films and television series. Largely white, male, and working-class, the Guardians provide the antidote to the disease of hypocrisy, materialism, and abuse that metastasizes across America similar to how the Jackass boys provided humor and energy against the dull routine of adult, middle-class life.
Similar to its earlier incarnations, Bad Grandpa idealizes the masculine, blue-collar realm as the site where ingenuity, love, and humor prospers. Because it is largely quarantined to this section of the film, however, makes Bad Grandpa seem more cynical and angry than the earlier films since it is less celebratory of masculine camaraderie and more accusatory of everyday life.
Following the same logic, the film’s most repulsive moment occurs during its nearly all-feminine realm of a beauty pageant. Irving dresses Billy in drag in order to win the prize money. As Billy participates as Lindsey, the prank exposes the underbelly of the pageant scene. Young girls are adorned in jewelry and imprisoned in heavy make-up and highly coiffed hair looking more like young hookers than beauty contestants.
The perversity of the moment is further stressed through the warped dialogue of mothers and daughters. One girl falsely claims that she participated in thousands of pageants and has won every one of them. Her adrenaline-induced mother further rationalizes such a pathological perspective: “It’s competitive. It’s a sport. Moms get into this competition, and if you’re going to do it and do it right you’ve got to be willing to be competitive.” As the mother attempts to explain herself, we watch her child continuously interrupt her, completely self-involved and bored with her mother’s words and existence.
Here where one would think children would be most protected—under the purview of their mothers— they are the most exploited. The mothers vicariously live through their daughters, placing their offspring in extremely cruel, pornographic, and demeaning conditions where the capitalist ethos of winning at all costs and judging people largely on outward beauty alone reigns supreme.
The main pleasure of the sequence arrives when Irving and Lindsey/Billy unearth the event’s pornographic undercurrents during Lindsey’s dance sequence. It begins with a seemingly innocent rendition of “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean”, an appropriately sentimental, outdated song that highlights the saccharine, superficial innocence that the pageant attempts to concoct. But halfway through the song, the prop boat falls on its side to become a stage and its mast a stripping pole as Lindsey flings off her sailor outfit to reveal a red lace bra and panties as Warrant’s “Sweet Cherry Pie” blasts over the sound system. Lindsey lewdly gyrates across the stage as the mothers sit in shock. Irving climbs on stage and flings dollars onto Lindsey to further emphasize the act’s sleaziness.
The dance actually serves as one of the more honest moments of the pageant. Rather than being hidden under the veneer of ruffled dresses and heavy make-up, the perversity of the pageant is made explicit. A cruel pleasure arises as we watch these mothers having to grapple with the pageant’s underbelly being exposed. The song is well-chosen, too, since its rather weak double-entendre of cherry pie for sex with virginal girls mirrors the similar weak cloak of the pageant itself justifying its pornographic and sadistic practices as wholesome American fun. The film’s all-too-easy reliance upon celebrating the masculine realm while denigrating the feminine one plays into a sexist binary that stretches throughout popular culture and its consumption that often relies upon a similar gendered dynamic.
The masculine community that defined the Jackass franchise withers to the relationship between Irving and Billy, which is mostly unremarkable. Yet a few unscripted moments arise between them that are genuinely funny. Irving asks Billy if he ever kissed a girl. Billy replies affirmatively and states that she was his girlfriend. Irving then asks, “How long did you date her for?” Billy replies, “A day,” which causes Knoxville to break character and cackle. He then responds, “That sounds like some of my relationships.”
For the most part, the film remains rather humorless. We watch good people placed in awkward situations such as witnessing having a coffin overturned with a body spilling out or having a wedding reception ruined by Irving falling on a cake. The pranks seem rote and sophomoric, lacking the humor, danger, and ingenuity found in the franchise’s earlier films and the television series. They serve as barometers for the aging of Knoxville who no longer has the endurance and a body limber enough to be attacked by a bull, shot out of a canon, and the like.
The film is caught between the mixed desires to create a narrative among developing characters and simple reliance upon the outrage of its pranks. In some ways, it is a middle-aged film where Knoxville and the producers attempt to hold onto their youth while simultaneously acknowledging its loss. Even its look has been drained of vitality. Replacing the earlier haphazard, youthful shooting style of the Jackass series is a predictable and “professional” look that has balanced frame composition accompanied by establishing shots and magic hour lighting.
The extras on the disc are largely unnecessary. They mostly explain the uneventful preparation for the film’s skits. There are a few deleted pranks on the extras that probably should have remained deleted. Overall, Bad Grandpa marks a distant memory for the vitality, the community, and the offensiveness that the Jackass series originally provided.
Although it occasionally has flashes of humor and insight, Bad Grandpa dodders through its narrative until it collapses wheezing by its end. But instead of being euthanized out of its misery, I suspect the Jackass franchise will get back up on its walker and comb through the aisles to see once more if a few more pennies cannot still be found.