It’s ridiculous to review yet another Jacka– movie. Of course, if you’ve been living under a rock or on another planet (or are far too young to even consider watching this kind of exploitative rot) you may not have heard of this franchise before.
So let me describe it. We’re exposed to a series of horrendous, strung-together stunts designed to inflict maximum agony, the kind that falls just shy of permanently crippling participants. Maybe. These incredibly painful-looking and sadistic sequences are put together by a guy named Johnny Knoxville and his crew of performers who gleefully embrace the franchise’s profane title.
Oh, and when I say “stunts,” I don’t mean they’re jumping a motorcycle over the Grand Canyon. No, these stunts are grotesque affairs that involve things such as closely viewed genital torture, gushing feces, gallons of splashing pig semen, acres of bruised and/or lacerated flesh, spewed vomit and a lot of naked old men. Sometimes all in the same scene.
There’s no story, no narrative, no point, certainly no moral. It’s just an hour and a half of people exposing themselves to horrible internal-organ-broken-bone injury while the rest of the watching gang laughs like rabid hyenas.
If you haven’t already stopped reading, I’ll give you a bit more detail below.
You’ve been warned.The only real positive here is the fact that they don’t actually kill anyone. On screen anyway. There are only a few obviously broken bones. And this pic includes a warning at both its beginning and end stating that viewers should not attempt any of the stunts depicted. (Though, there have been accounts of people doing just that and being horribly hurt or killed, and things haven’t gone well for many cast members over the years, either.)
The only real positive here is the fact that they don’t actually kill anyone. On screen anyway. There are only a few obviously broken bones. And this pic includes a warning at both its beginning and end stating that viewers should not attempt any of the stunts depicted. (Though, there have been accounts of people doing just that and being horribly hurt or killed, and things haven’t gone well for many cast members over the years, either.)
Other than a lot of bleeped out blasphemes, God isn’t mentioned.
Though not titillating in any way, we see a lot of men with very few clothes on during the movie’s catapulting and battering stunts. (Some of the guys are very overweight, which is emphasized in sloshing fashion during slow-motion retakes of their ground-thumping landings. Several are repeatedly knocked out cold.)
Full frontal male nudity is everywhere as well, including groups of naked men just standing around. (More on that below.)
Similarly, a man’s penis is painted green and, through camera trickery, made to look as if it’s about the size of Godzilla. It appears to be shuffling down the street in this pic’s opening scene, as citizens and soldiers flee from it; a truly disgusting part of the scene involves the soldiers being covered with semen. Elsewhere, a couple guys have their organs flattened out as thin as wafers between two pieces of clamped plexiglass.
There’s a movie-like sequence at this pic’s beginning that features flaming car crashes and huge explosions. But by and large, the film is made up of nasty, painful-looking bits that generally appear to have been dreamed up as a series of outlandish “what if” questions. What if a guy purposely stood in front of a charging bull or put his face next to an angry rat snake? What if a woman stuck her tongue into a sparking Taser?
Yes, there is a woman included in the stunt crew this go-round, but her torturous stunts are on the “softer” side of the scale. That Taser lick and a scorpion sting to the lips are some of hers. And they’re in the same camp as guys sliding down a 60-foot greased ramp in their underwear to bounce across packed dirt and gravel. Or guys rolling shirtless into a patch of cactus or over a table covered in rat traps and large thumb tacks. Those stunts are general dumb stuff, the things that don’t necessarily maim you.
But then the Jacka– pros move on to their more intense repertoire. What would happen if a man was launched into the air while in a full-to-overflowing Porta Potty, for instance? Or how about a series of stunts where the same guy has his crotch pummeled by a massive MMA fighter, a hurling hockey puck and a fast-pitch softball? People being thwacked repeatedly in the crotch (clothed and naked) is an oft-repeated “favorite” in this crew’s mind.
There are fanged spider bites to a someone’s nipple, snake bites to the face. Defecation gags, testicles used as punching bags, a bear clawing at a guy’s honey and salmon-covered crotch. Naked men have their fully exposed bits pummeled, scraped, covered in bees and detonated. (Guys also show the camera their badly bruised, bee-stung and bloodied genitals after stunts that didn’t go quite as planned.)
On and on it goes. And it gets cruder with every passing stunt—if that’s possible!
More than 100 f-words and 30 s-words fill the cackling dialogue and moans of agony. They’re joined by a cavalcade of other crudities. And God’s and Jesus’ names are both abused some 30 times total (God is blended with “d–n” for seven of those).
None.
Without going into detail, urine, animal semen, excrement and vomit all make an appearance in various forms throughout this film. The movie and its crew celebrate and guffaw over people ingesting some of those substances. (One cameraman retched and vomited several times while simply watching the goings-on.) On top of that, the cameras (and some faces) get so close to various people’s nether regions that you might think you’re viewing a proctology video.
Jacka– Forever once again relishes cruel depravity, perversely unleashing pain for a sick laugh. In any other context, we would call this what it is: torture. No animals were hurt in the making of this movie. But its stars? Oh, they most certainly were.
Yep, that’s what this franchise is: a torture reel mocking fat, limping, mostly naked guys who are older-but-none-the-wiser, guys willfully enduring bodily abuse in the name of entertainment.
But even with the animals out and the willful idiots in, it still feels just as degrading, disgusting and borderline cruel to be watching this trash.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
