?I?m gravely serious when I say that the ?Jackass? franchise of films are some of the finest forms of modern entertainment in our generation, and surely the purest modern incarnation of performance art that exists today. They?re perfectly orchestrated chaos. Watching a ?Jackass? film entertains you and thrills you like no other, all the while making you feel like you are welcome and part of a community of friends.Coming after ?Jackass 3D,? and perhaps due to the sudden death of cast member Ryan Dunn, or simply because the crew wasn?t ready for a full-on ?Jackass 4,? ?Jackass: Bad Grandpa? finds series superstar Johnny Knoxville assuming the role of Irving Zissman, an angry, perverted old man forced to take his grandson on a cross-country trip to return the boy to his biological father. If you?ve seen Sacha Baron Cohen?s ?Borat,? that?s basically the narrative form of ?Bad Grandpa:? a series of brutally hilarious public pranks strung together by a barely-there narrative thread. I?d actually argue that ?Bad Grandpa? pulls it off more effectively than ?Borat? does. ?Bad Grandpa? cares as much about its storyline as you do when it starts off, so by the time it reaches its climax in the middle of a biker bar, the stakes feel surprisingly real, almost out of nowhere, and it gets good. The film is at its best when it?s pulling off scenes like this one, and another that takes place in a male strip club. They?re not just hilarious, but also thrilling, and spectacularly dangerous. Rarely in previous ?Jackass? films did the pranks feel as dangerous and real as they do here.Of course, something is lost from previous films in the series. This is Johnny Knoxville?s show, and if you appreciate his spectacular talent for entertaining and consistently refusing to back down from danger, you?ll love this film from start to finish. But nobody else is here; the communal, fraternal feeling found in the first three ?Jackass? films is nowhere to be seen.?Jackass: Bad Grandpa? is a showcase for Johnny Knoxville?s pure improvisational talent, not to mention his bullheaded stubbornness that makes him like no other entertainer alive today. It?s not a new ?Jackass? film. It is pretty good, however, and will fill you with just as much glee for 90 minutes of your life, which is sadly more than I can say for 95 percent of the films currently in theatres.