The Impractical Jokers—a popular comedic TV series consisting of 8 seasons-worth of episodes has finally made its way into theatres with its new release, “Impractical Jokers: The Movie”. Sticking with their popular format of the pranks and challenges taking place among the 4 friends to the unaware public was very successful and just as funny in the movie as it is on TV, however, the acting and plot throughout the movie left lots to be desired. As a huge Impractical Jokers fan, I was excited to watch them in a different format, and though much of the movie was hilarious as usual, there were many empty spaces with no laughs, particularly at the beginning and end of the movie. 

The Impractical Jokers are 4 lifelong friends and in each show, they compete to embarrass each other, and they do this through hidden camera challenges and interacting with unsuspecting people. Since their show consists of improvisation and not planned out acting, the “acting” that took place in the written skits of the movie was brutal at times and not very entertaining, which was highlighted in the introduction. The movie started off at a Paula Abdul concert in 1992 giving an introduction to all of the Jokers for fans who were unfamiliar with the show while setting up the plot for helping make the challenges throughout the rest of the film make sense. Though this was necessary, the intro was extremely lengthy and gave me a very poor outlook on the rest of the movie. 

If you were able to make it through the prolonged intro without falling asleep, for both fans of the Impractical Jokers, or people who had never seen Sal, Q, Joe and Murr, the 10 challenges that they competed in throughout the movie were very funny. Paula Abdul gave the Jokers 3 tickets which they had to compete for, to get a spot at her birthday party. Some of the moments while the Jokers were competing I enjoyed more than I can remember for any other movie and found myself laughing at well after the end of the movie. This includes challenges such as Sal being trapped inside of a hotel with his biggest fear, a tiger, or Murr’s inappropriate birthday party that he did not realize was taking place in front of his extended family. 

Once you got through the challenges, the ending wrapped the movie up well, but similar to the introduction, there was little comedy throughout the rest of the film following the challenges. This was another large chunk of time during the movie that was simply not very funny, and more of a waste of time for me than anything.  

Some of the hilarious stunts they pulled off during the movie made me happy overall that I got to see the film, and a lot of the movie was much funnier than what you could find on their TV show because being in theaters allowed for the jokes to be less restricted. No matter your level of familiarity with the Impractical Jokers, this movie is at least a worthwhile watch once. But after already seeing the very funny jokes, the bland plot will certainly not be enough to get me to watch this movie again.