JOHNNY Knoxville (born 1971) plays Irving (age 86), free at last from a marriage to a termagant. Irving wants only one thing – poontang, with women past their prime. But his daughter in gaol asks him to drive her eight-year-old son Billy from Lincoln, Nebraska, into the care of Billy’s father in Raleigh, North Carolina, providing a collateral economy by putting the dead wife in the car boot for disposal on the way.

The trip becomes a series of coarse gags strung along a road movie through the underbelly of America, lower-class citizens reacting to unrestrained visual gags; faecal incontinence happens more often than necessary, a scrotum hanging halfway down Irving’s thigh is more grotesque than amusing and sharp eyes will discern cutting budget corners, particularly the same tradesman’s van in the background of sequences in widely separated cities.

As Billy, Jackson Nicoll acts with maturity and dances with agility. His female impersonation at a juvenile beauty pageant is a high spot. However, one wonders what residues the experience of the role have deposited in him.

 At Dendy, Hoyts and Limelight