Review: Action Point (2018)

Action Point (2018)

Rated R for crude sexual content, language, drug use, teen drinking, and brief graphic nudity

Score: 2 out of 5

I really wanted to like Action Point, for two reasons. First, and most obviously, it's Johnny Knoxville returning to his Jackass roots, complete with his co-star Chris Pontius in tow. As a child of the late '90s/early '00s who thinks that Jackass' blend of the Three Stooges, Evel Knievel, and modern skater edge still holds up, seeing them back in action was worth the price of admission by itself, even if, with both Knoxville and Pontius now in their forties (and Knoxville in his late forties), the joke ending of the first Jackass movie, in which the crew comes back in 2063 to keep doing these dangerous stunts despite them being geriatric, was starting to seem less and less like a joke. Second, as somebody who grew up in New Jersey, the subject matter of this film grabbed my attention immediately. It's based on the real-life Action Park in Vernon, New Jersey, also known as "Accident Park", "Traction Park", and "Class Action Park", an amusement park that was notorious for poorly-trained, apathetic staff, drunk guests, and rides that weren't merely unsafe but flat-out dangerous in ways that would get park owners sued into bankruptcy today (and indeed, that was the fate that ultimately befell the park in the '90s). The 14-minute documentary The Most Insane Amusement Park Ever, which served as the inspiration for this film, goes into more detail on some of the wacky, outrageous shit that Action Park offered guests and that its owners got away with during its heyday in the '80s. The idea of the Jackass crew doing a take-off on Action Park, with people getting maimed and thrown around by such bright ideas as the looping water slide and the tennis-ball tanks, should've been slapstick comedy gold.

And this film does have all that... it just doesn't really know what to do with it. This is one of those movies where all the good parts are in the trailer, as the film soon runs out of ideas about halfway in. Not only did it feel like they were holding back, missing some of the more ridiculous stuff that happened at the real Action Park (racing the go-karts on public roads, having to buy ambulances for the nearest hospital), but the thin plot and one-dimensional characters wound up dragging the film down once they took over during the third act. This was a real disappointment, especially after the laugh-out-loud hysterical Bad Grandpa, and perhaps a sign that it may be time for Knoxville and company to give it a rest.

The film is told through a framing device of Knoxville's character, an old man named Deshawn Crious "D.C." Carver, babysitting his young granddaughter Rudy and telling her about an amusement park he owned back in the '70s called Action Point, particularly during the one summer when his daughter (Rudy's mom) Boogie came out to California to stay with him. Facing declining ticket sales in the face of the slick new Six Flags-esque park opening half an hour away, D.C. decides to offer the one thing that those corporate types can't: an extreme, no-rules, anything-goes experience where the rickety, dangerous nature of the rides is a feature rather than a bug. Fending off debt collectors, a land developer trying to take over the park, and lawsuits, D.C. and his motley crew of employees set out to save their park.

I'll give the film credit, when it came to the stunts there were plenty of moments where it recaptured that old Jackass glory. Knoxville and Pontius may be deep into middle age, but they're no less enthusiastic about over-the-top stunts involving water slides, trebuchets, the luge ride from hell, and wild animals (including a bear that loves its liquor). When it was just the cast goofing off without caring a damn about the plot, I was immediately sent back fifteen to twenty years watching reruns of Jackass and its assorted spinoffs (Wildboyz, Viva La Bam) on MTV2. I wish that more of the film had been like this, instead of trying to force in storylines about D.C. outsmarting a douchebag developer and reconnecting with his daughter. They dragged the film to a halt every time they came up, and unfortunately, that was increasingly often as the film went on, all but taking it over in the third act. The fact that, save for D.C. (essentially Knoxville playing himself), none of these characters got any meaningful development or personality meant that I had precious little reason to care about them. It's mentioned in the present-day scenes that Boogie never told Rudy about Action Point and implied that she doesn't like to talk about it, but that's never built upon later. This could've been an interesting way to establish D.C. and Boogie's relationship, with Boogie's horrified reaction to the lawlessness of her father's park leading her to become what's implied to be the very uptight mom she is now, with perhaps a deeper theme about why places like Action Point couldn't exist today (which is touched on in the beginning). As it is, though, this relationship is only established in fits and starts, and any differences between them are quickly smoothed over during the ending. It wasn't helped by the deep clashes in tone that the story's intrusion resulted in. Half of the movie is essentially Jackass, with its anarchic, irreverent brand of daredevil slapstick, so when the other half suddenly asked me to start taking things seriously, I couldn't. It felt as though the people making the film either ran out of ideas for stunts and gags or got injured one too many times on set and couldn't do some of the stuff they had planned, and decided that they needed an actual story for their movie, even though Bad Grandpa worked perfectly fine as a series of mostly non-dangerous set pieces with only the flimsiest excuse for a plot.

The Bottom Line

The fact that the film's framing device is an old man telling his grandkid about his glory days is perhaps unintentionally telling about the film itself. While the stunts and gags are still good, they eventually wear thin, and there's not nearly enough meat on this film's bones to hold it up once they do. Somebody could probably make a hilarious movie about Action Park, but this ain't it; until then, I recommend watching that short documentary I linked to earlier.