The pranksters who masterminded Jackass star in this comedy based on the story of Action Park, a New Jersey attraction and health and safety nightmare that was shut down in the mid-1990s due to several lawsuits involving personal injuries. A largely pointless frame narrative introduces DC (Johnny Knoxville, in prosthetic old-age makeup), who tells his pre-teen granddaughter of his glory days managing the park and its corporate takeover in 1979, creating an opportunity for the film to slip into flashback mode. The toilet humour, injury set pieces and scene that sees DC’s sidekick Benny (Knoxville’s Jackass co-star Chris Pontius) trying to lure a squirrel into his shorts made me yearn for Greg Mottola’s altogether sweeter theme park period piece Adventureland, but perhaps it’s unfair to compare the two. You could make the argument that this film is effective enough as a series of stunt gags in 70s costume, and an alcoholic bear certainly made me crack a smile. But the subplot involving DC’s attempts to bring up his 14-year-old daughter is a saccharine afterthought, and feels oddly out of step with the vacuous nature of the rest of the film’s throwaway laughs.
