FilM

Failed stunt

So, something has happened in Jackass land since Bad Grandpa.

While Bad Grandpa wasn’t technically a Jackass movie, it was a “Jackass Presents” movie, and it had the usual Jackass movie director, Jeff Tremaine, calling the shots. The results were the kind of fun we expect from a Jackass movie, with a little more narrative plot, but the emphasis remaining on the killer stunts.

Action Point is a stinky pile-of-shit movie. The Jackass label and director are gone, with only stars Johnny Knoxville and Chris Pontius representing the former crew. The slant goes much more toward the narrative—a bad and boring narrative—with only a few OK stunts thrown in for good measure. It’s an uneven, embarrassing, unfunny mess.

That’s a shame, because Knoxville proves he’s certainly still game to get his ass kicked for the glory of cinema—although he’s looking a little beat-up these days—and the “true” story at the center of the movie is one ripe for Jackass-type fun. The formula simply doesn’t work this time.

The story is based upon a real, now mostly defunct amusement park—Action Park in New Jersey—that had an actual death count (six deaths). I grew up on Long Island and would go to this park in the ’80s. It’s now legendary for its danger factor—a place where safety just wasn’t really on the top of everybody’s list of concerns.

I nearly drowned in the tidal wave pool .Others actually did. I marveled at the Cannonball Loop slide I could never go on because it was closed due to broken bones, limbs and noses. (That ride is lamely immortalized in this movie.) There was also an Alpine Slide with a cement track, which you rode on atop a plastic car with a shaky, janky brake; you were in complete control of whether or not you met your bloody demise. It was fucking crazy.

Sadly, the movie inspired by it is not. It’s dumb, and it plays it safe—basically an insult to the legend of Action Park—or Death Park, as we liked to call it.

Knoxville plays D.C., an older man babysitting his granddaughter in the present day, so that calls for the old age makeup Knoxville usually wears so well. D.C. reminisces about a crazy park he once owned called Action Point, and the story flashes back to the ’80s and D.C.’s efforts to create a thrill ride/water park haven where “you are in control.”

D.C. tries to save the park from evil land developers while trying to entertain his daughter, Boogie (Eleanor Worthington-Cox), who’s visiting for the summer. There’s some sentimental nonsense involving the father-daughter relationship, which acts as nothing but a roadblock to what we want to really see—the stunts.

Those stunts are only mildly amusing, and few and far between. They include Knoxville getting catapulted through a barn (pretty good), Knoxville getting blasted by a water hose (OK), and Knoxville hanging around a beer-swilling bear (funny the first time—been there, done that by the 10th). At one point, they tempt a squirrel into Pontius’s shorts to fetch acorns and tickle his balls. It does appear to me that some animals, including the squirrel, an ostrich, an alligator and a porcupine, were mildly abused during the making of this film. Any animal that has to hang out near Pontius’s crotch should be considered in harm’s way.

Let’s face it, Knoxville has to slow down on the daredevil stuff, lest he wants to meet an early grave. Bad Grandpa, and now Action Point, are evidence of this. What Knoxville needs is a new Jackass crew that he can mentor from the sidelines.

Action Point is proof he’s past the point where he can take a herd of buffalo to his mid-section. It’s also proof he needs Tremaine and his cronies to help guide the mayhem. This new crew is lamer than the Cannonball Loop being closed every summer I tried to ride it. Ω

“People in sleeping bags are the soft tacos of the bear world.”

Action Point 12345

4Avengers: Infinity War The Avengers team takes a swift kick to their remarkably muscular collective ass via a super baddie named Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, likely the best big blockbuster time you will have at the cinemas this summer. The last “Avengers” movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron, was a misguided, boring dud. This third installment—the first of a two-parter—lets it all hang out with a massive collection of characters and a scary sense of impending doom. There are many, many storylines at play servicing many superheroes and villains. Infinity War feels like the Magnolia of Marvel movies in that it takes all of those storylines and balances them in a cohesive, vastly entertaining manner. It’s over two-and-a-half hours long, but it’s never even close to boring. The balancing act is performed by directors Anthony and Joe Russo, the team that made Captain America: Civil War such a winner. The magic of that film carries over into this one, which picks up directly after the end of Thor: Ragnarok. That film ended with Thor and his fellow Asgardians feeling somewhat triumphant after losing their planet after defeating emo Cate Blanchett. A mid-credits scene saw their ship coming face to face with one owned by the mighty Thanos (Josh Brolin). In one of the great performance-capture achievements, Brolin is the best of monsters, one who manages just enough of a sensitive side that he falls well short of stereotype.

3Cargo I’ve had it up to here with zombies. (I stopped watching The Walking Dead after season two.) But this genre film, set in the Australian Outback, is actually pretty good. Martin Freeman stars as a man surviving a zombie apocalypse on a houseboat with his wife and baby daughter. Things go very badly not long after the movie starts, and he must battle to survive on land to ensure a future for his family. Directors Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke, who also wrote the screenplay, keep the origins of the apocalypse shrouded in secrecy and that’s a good move. There are cool elements, like government provided survival— and disposal—packs for those who become infected, and the fact that Freeman has a baby strapped to his back during a rather harrowing medical emergency. The film relies more upon its sense of dread and impending doom rather than straight-up zombie violence. The humans who aren’t sick turn out to be a lot scarier than the ghouls. (Streaming on Netflix.)

3Deadpool 2 The happily profane superhero party continues with Deadpool 2, a sequel that brings the anarchic spirit of the original without necessarily blazing any new trails. Ryan Reynolds, who has experienced a career explosion thanks to this franchise—and, of course, his undeniable talents—continues to break the fourth wall, Ferris Bueller style. While the gimmick definitely leads to some good laughs, it does get to a point that feels a little too cute and repetitive. He winks at the audience so much, he must have some severe eyelid muscle strains. He’s gonna have an eyeball pop out. The film starts with Deadpool dejectedly blowing himself up, complete with a severed arm giving the finger. Then it goes into flashback mode as Wade Wilson cleverly and smarmily tells us why he did such a thing. We also get a repeat of the “Wiseass Opening Credits” gag that got the original off to such a good start. This time, instead of Juice Newton’s “Angel of the Morning,” the credits roll to a brand new ballad from Celine Dion, so the stakes have definitely been raised. Directed by David Leitch, one of the guys who directed John Wick, the film definitely ups the ante on the action front, with gun and swordfights that have some major zip to them. Josh Brolin joins the fray as the time-traveling Cable, another multilayered bad guy for Brolin’s resume (alongside his brilliant Thanos). It’s not as good as the first one, but it’s still good.

1Life of the Party The great Melissa McCarthy suffers the Ben Falcone curse yet again in Life of the Party, a shitty Back to Schoolrip-off, which makes it double shitty because Back to School sucked. Falcone is McCarthy’s husband, and he has now directed her in three movies, all bad. The duo worked together on Tammy, one of McCarthy’s worst films, and The Boss, the best of their work together but still pretty bad. McCarthy plays Deanna, a frumpy, middle-aged mom with a daughter, Maddie (Molly Gordon), going into her last year in college. Within minutes of dropping their daughter off at school, her husband (Matt Walsh) dumps her for a real estate agent played by the actress from Modern Family(Julie Bowen). A dejected Deanna decides to enroll in school—a shockingly easy process in this film—and finds herself not only attending college alongside her daughter but hanging out with her and her sorority sisters. She’s considered a square at first, but a quick makeover during a party in the bathroom has her emerge as the coolest new girl on campus with awesome hair. What follows are a bunch of predictable gags involving college life and McCarthy struggling to make material well beneath her talents go somewhere.

3Solo After one of the more tumultuous productions in recent film history, Solo: A Star Wars Story makes it to screens, completed by a different director than the ones who started the gig. About a year ago, director Ron Howard took over for directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie,21 Jump Street) after executive producer Kathleen Kennedy showed them the door. Howard took over when principal photography was near completion, but then wound up reshooting 70 percent of the movie. The finished film definitely feels like more than one director had their hands in the pot. It’s sloppy and tonally challenged, and scenes crash into each other at times, killing an otherwise brisk and fun pace. There are moments in this movie that feel like they were shoehorned into the plot to fix a story problem. OK, so there are some definite negatives at play here, but there are plenty of positives. The positives aren’t enough to keep Solo from being one of the weaker Star Wars films, but they are enough to keep it recommendable and a relatively good time at the movies. Diehard Star Warsfans, years from now, will probably shrug and say “Eh, it was OK” when asked to reexamine their feelings. In the end, Solowill probably fall somewhere in between The Star Wars Holiday Specialand Revenge of the Sithon the favorite Star Warsfilm scale. Alden Ehrenreich, a likeable actor, steps into the role of Han Solo, a sacred role thanks to Harrison Ford. While Ehrenreich puts an OK spin on the character, he’s far from remarkable. Donald Glover, however, is perfection as a young Lando Calrissian. He needs his own movie.

2Upgrade Some well-choreographed action scenes can’t help this low budget sci-fi thriller make the grade. Logan Marshall-Green stars as Grey, a muscle car-loving geek who fixes classic autos for rich people in the future. After he and his girlfriend (Betty Gabriel) have an accident in her self-driving car (I just don’t know how I will ever be able to get into one of those things), Grey is left paralyzed and hungry for revenge. One of Grey’s clients, a tech giant named Eron (Harrison Gilbertson) has a solution: an implant called Stem that will bridge the gap between his brain and severed spinal cord. What he doesn’t tell Grey is that Stem will internally speak to him with a voice like Hal’s from 2001: A Space Odyssey and that when Stem takes over his body, he will have ninja skills. This sounds like it would be fun, but many of the performers in this movie seem like they’ve never been in front of a camera before. While there’s plenty of action in the flick, and that action is often good, most of the movie is characters speaking dialogue, and the dialogue and delivery is often terrible. It also lacks a much needed sense of humor. Now, if they made an Upgrade sizzle reel, a 15-minute summary of all the cool fight scenes and chases in the movie, that would be worth a viewing on YouTube. Unfortunately, this movie is a lot longer than that, and most of it is melodramatic and tough on the ears.