Action Point is the latest stunt and stupid filled movie brought to us by a lot of the same people that brought us Jackass. When I was younger I really enjoyed Jackass the TV show as well as all of it’s movies and spinoffs. I still find the old Jackass show and movies funny but it is a little harder to laugh at some of those stunts today with what we now know about concussions. Having been a fan of Jackass I really wanted to give Action Point a chance but it just comes off as mediocre.
Action Point is about a middle aged slacker named D.C. (Johnny Knoxville) who owns and operates his own dangerous theme park with a bunch of misfits in the late ’70s. D.C.’s daughter Boogie (Elenore Worthington-Cox) comes to stay with him for the summer and D.C. is finding it hard due to Boogie growing up and maturing. A new bigger, better, and safer theme park opens up in town and D.C. and his crew of misfits have to pull together so that the Action Point theme park doesn’t get put out of business.
Johnny Knoxville has always been kind of likable and funny but I would never mistake him for being a great actor. He has had a decent career due to the Jackass stuff but none of his normal narritve and scripted movies have ever worked for me. I’d like to see Knoxville try and act in a more serious non-comedy movie or TV show because I think he has talent and it would be interesting to see if he could work in a serious role. Unfortunately I don’t see that happening any time soon as he seems to just want to ride off the Jackass fame.
The chemistry between Knoxville and Worthington-Cox’s father and daughter characters is somewhat decent but it is mostly a relationship full of cliches. Other than that relationship there isn’t much more to Action Point. It is filled with a lot of dumb stunts in the run down theme park and unlike the Jackass movies the stunts just aren’t that funny. The stunts in the Jackass movies work because you get to see the genuine reaction from the cast and crew which makes it that much funnier. In Action Point even though a lot of the stunts were real the reactions feel fake and enauthentic due to them being tied down to the restraints of the narritve.
The only other Jackass castmate in Action Point is Chris Pontius. I enjoyed Chris Pontius and Steve-O’s Jackass spinoff show Wild Boyz but here he just plays a lovable good and doesn’t add too much. If like to think that more cast-members from Jackass being in this movie would make it better but that is really just wishful thinking. Unfortunately I think the antics of Jackass as entertainment is well past it’s prime and should probably just stay in the 2000s decade when more people thought it was funny.
Dave’s Rating- ★★(2) out of ★★★★★(5)
