Action Point

2018 comedy

Rating: 5/20

Plot: When a real amusement park moves in next door, a low-budget and highly dangerous amusement park is threatened. Johnny Knoxville, the assortment of oddballs he employs, and his visiting daughter have to try to fight off big business.

What am I doing with my life?

That's the question I asked myself a few times while watching Action Point in an empty theater, one where I was free to fart liberally and pick at my toenails.

Here's the story, something nobody would ever ask for. In the town I live in, there's a big current stink surrounding the high school and an orchestra teacher who had to resign because he didn't want to call transgender students by their preferred names. I went to the 2 1/2 hour school board meeting, got in a shouting match with somebody outside the school board meeting, and felt pretty depressed about the whole thing afterward. I needed something stupid to get my mind off of all that, and I thought a trip to the theater to see this movie would at least provide a few laughs.

It didn't.

I like the Jackass movies fine, but I don't think I've liked anything else Johnny Knoxville has been associated with. This has Jackassian moments where the movie's narrative kind of pauses so that Knoxville can be launched into something or launched off something or be knocked over by something or knock over something. I did laugh once, at a person in a mascot smiling bear costume getting kicked in the crotch. That was impossible not to laugh at. In fact, all points I'm giving to this movie is because of the bear mascot. It's nothing to do with Knoxville. He can still take a violent pratfall at an age when he probably needs to think about whether that's still a good idea. That's what my mind was on each time I saw one of the stunts. Those stunts were also really set up in an annoying way. It's like they said, "Ok, let's put the narrative aside for a bit because we all know it doesn't work at all and let Johnny catapult himself into the side of a barn." And then that would happen and movie let the empty theater absorb the whole thing before moving on.

Near the end, there's a wild montage that involves an ostrich, a guy holding a corn dog to his head because apparently it's some sort of injury, a guy on fire, puking, and that bear mascot having sexual relations. For about thirty seconds, I almost enjoyed myself. The rest of this--with the weak father/daughter relationship subplot, the bad Johnny Knoxville acting, the conflict with big business that really made it hard to root for either side--was a real chore.

And no, I have no clear answer to the "What am I doing with my life?" question. That remains unanswered.