Aletheia Tan
“Please, God, don’t let there be a Jackass 3,” laments Bam Margera as Jackass Number Two approaches its end. His reaction isn’t surprising, seeing how the Jackass (from MTV’s hit television series Jackass) crew’s aging bodies are once again put through a movie-long run of disgustingly dangerous stunts, simply “because it’s funny”, as Ryan Dunn puts it to Bam’s mum after branding Bam’s butt with an image of a phallus. (Yes, you read right, the movie is littered with phalluses.)
The film begins with Johnny Knoxville, Margera, Dunn, Steve-O , Jason “Wee Man” Acuna and their friends being chased by a herd of bulls, Pamplona Bull Run style, only they aren’t running on the cobblestone streets of northern Spain, but between the cement-paved driveways of American suburbia.
As the bulls and boys crash through windows, the similarity between the age-old tradition of Pamplona and the Jackass brand of warped self-mutilating spectacles, suggests that the Jackass premise, that of horrifying death-seeking stunts, isn’t really that unusual or original after all.
Jackass Number Two is really just a succession of skits, each more sensational than the first, where Knoxville and his crew do horrible things to themselves in every horrendously hazardous manner, sometimes to comical, if sadistic, effect.
Crazy though a bull run might sound, the stunts in the film are of a far more dubious and questionable nature. In one scene Bam is placed on top of a carnival contraption — the hammer-driven strength tester — so that a dildo is driven up his naked anus by a Herculean-man (homoeroticism is like an ever-present gag throughout the film). Then there’s the scene where Steve-O forces a big fishhook through his own cheek, then throws himself in the shark infested open sea as human bait and almost gets his foot chomped off.
Also sighted throughout the movie are a slew of naked buttocks, saggy breasts, faeces, projectile vomit and semen. The Jackasses risk their lives, permanent injury, or at least absolute humiliation as they try to ski on staircases, get locked up with bees, collide into metal doors, put leeches on their eyeballs, chug beer up their butts, ride on rockets and play with explosive anti-riot devices.
To keep the variety up, they even roped in guest stars like filmmakers Spike Jonze and John Waters , actors Luke Wilson (My Super-Ex Girlfriend) and Willie Garson (Sex in the City) as well as athletes like Tony Hawk and Mark Zupan who add to the brutal fun.
While puke-inducing scenes are spread throughout the film, there is a dearth of gags with a touch of true wit, the exception being the one with Chris Pontius dressed up as the devil being spewed up from a manhole in the street, shocking pedestrians.
While the first film was shot on shaky, muddy, digital cameras and a low budget, the sequel has much improved production value and cinematography, for what that’s worth, given the content.
The movie can be likened to watching an extended, warped and uncensored version of America’s Funniest Home Videos, with outrageous clips that will shock, and even though it gets a tad repetitive, invoke constant “Oh my God” moments.
The film’s virile yet puerile humour — the kind meant to upset parents and gross out the girls— is a result of the Jackasses’ resistance to growing up and might be too crude for some to handle, much like the horse manure on screen. Those with strong stomachs, though, will be thoroughly entertained by the hare-brained antics
So if you’re clutching a couple of movie tickets, be prepared for fluctuating degrees of inebriation, exhibitionism, sadism and masochism. Have a suitably vitiated state of mind and refrain from eating during or before the movie. Consider yourselves warned.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Movie Details
Running Time: 92 min
Opens: Jan 25
Language: English
Details: R21
Director: Jeff Tremaine
Cast: Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Chris Pontius, Steve-O, Ryan Dunn, Jason “Wee Man” Acuna, Dave England, Preston Lacy, Ehren Mcghehey