Hot Take: Somehow, 84 minutes feels like 184. Action pointless.
From what I’m being told, Action Point had a running time of 75 minutes followed by 9 minutes of outtakes. Even if I looked at the clock before and after viewing the latest Johnny Knoxville comedy and calculated the run time, I wouldn’t have believed it. I would have just assumed that the clock stopped at some point during my viewing of Action Point, an unambitious attempt to weave a plot around a lite version of Jackass. The plot is so distractingly dull, drifting away and missing the stunts is an absolute possibility. This was evident when the credits rolled and during the outtakes, there were fails shown from stunts that I didn’t remember from the film.
In Action Point, Knoxville dons the grandpa make-up again as he did in Bad Grandpa. In this film, though, he plays a different grandpa (Deshawn Crious “D.C.” Carver). Spending the day with his granddaughter, “D.C.” reminisces about the amusement park he owned and operated in the ’70s. The storytelling flashbacks are akin to the scenes in The Princess Bride if there were ridiculous stunts where grandpa would get injured for no other reason than it was funny when Johnny Knoxville got hurt dressed as an old grandpa in Bad Grandpa. The story itself features a few Jackass alumni as “D.C.” decides to turn his park — Action Point — into an extreme amusement park where all the safety controls are turned off and no rules apply. As the big amusement park in town puts more pressure on “D.C.” to sell and the bank comes looking for their money with a threat of foreclosure, “D.C.” goes even more extreme and with the help of his daughter Boogie (Eleanor Worthington Cox) and a group of misfit workers, the plot sets up for a bunch of pointless stunts where Knoxville can get decimated for our amusement. Unfortunately, there’s not much to laugh at here and the distracting, pointless plot takes up way too much time.
Action Point is the type of film that makes me wonder if I’ve outgrown certain types of movies. At my age, I’ve gone back and watched a few films that I loved as a kid and wonder what I liked so much about it. My sensibilities won’t allow me to accept that I would have like Action Point at any age, though. Even though I enjoyed all of the Jackass films that made it to the big screen (with each sequel being less enjoyable than the previous stunt/prank compilation), I couldn’t find the same enjoyment here. Instead, Action Point felt like a complete waste of time filled with leftover stunts from previous Jackass flicks that Knoxville and friends didn’t want to go to waste. If only it were that easy to explain this mess. Instead, it’s just a misfire you should avoid.
Why Watch?
You’re looking for a cure for insomnia.
Why Skip?
There’s paint drying somewhere.