Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa - C

Rated R, 91 minutes

"Bad Grandpa" serves up same old, cheap laughs

Jackson Nicoll and Johnny Knoxville

"Bad Grandpa" is a stale extension of the hugely profitable, profane hidden-camera MTV series "Jackass," which ran its course over three sequels. It's back, sort of, with Irving Zisner, the Johnny Knoxville-created Grandpa character featured in some of the "Jackass" pranks. Grandpa and his grandson Billy (actor Jackson Nicoll) trek across country, pranking people on hidden camera along the way. Inane and utterly unnecessary, Knoxville and his "Jackass" director Jeff Tremaine are back for more hijinks and stupid shtick in this spinoff, except the pranks unfold from a more structured story than the plotless "Jackass" movies. Problematic is that this plot isn't funny and the pranks generally aren't as good or as elaborately staged as the "Jackass" stunts. Knoxville, a charming actor who's become sort of a contemporary, low-brow Allen Funt, admittedly garners some laughs and funny reactions from onlookers as he plows through a furniture store or boisterously crashes a bingo parlor, but overall there's fewer outrageous laughs than the "Jackass" movies usually produce. Cheaply produced and really just a silly string of bad, smutty jokes, "Bad Grandpa" will attract enough of the "Jackass" following to still turn a profit, even if it has a been-there, done-that feel to it.

Wes's Grade: C