Rating- * * * (3/5)
As a critic, it’s important that I get all my biases out of the way before I tell you my thoughts on this movie. First, I am not particularly a fan of the gross humor so popular in most movies today (i.e. the Farrelly brothers’ movies, American Pie, etc.). On the other hand, many of my fondest memories from high school owe a great deal of their inspiration to the television series on which this film is based, MTV’s now defunct Jackass. In case you’ve been under the proverbial rock for a while, the show starred a seemingly intelligent guy named Johnny Knoxville who did unusually stupid and dangerous stunts with several friends and usually ended up with quite a few scars at the end of the day. The cast of characters include Wee-Man the midget, the obese Percy, the quiet but untamable Steve-O, and the just plain annoying guy, Bam. These guys pride themselves on how much pain they can take and they’ve never met a stupid stunt they couldn’t do, but they do it all in the name of comedy, not for some macho bravado that most stuntmen seem to have. This movie is basically an extension some of the stunts you might see on the show, although most of the stunts in the movie probably couldn’t be shown on TV. I won’t reveal any of the stunts in this review because it would remove the comic surprise and also I would probably feel uncomfortable even writing about some of them. The whole movie is basically comprised of a series of stunts stringed together in no particular order. Obviously, it doesn’t work as a film but it is not supposed to; for once we have a film that is not trying to do anything but make us laugh and it works. While I recognize that this is by no means a great film, I admire Jackass so much more than something like Stealing Harvard because it accomplishes what it sets out to do, which is make you laugh. It doesn’t settle with using the same old tired jokes that every other movie has done before and it doesn’t rely on cheap gags that make you laugh for a moment and then tire of it. These guys went out of their way to think up the most twisted, bizarre, painful activities that you could ever pay $50 to some college frat guy to do and they did it…for us…for $7.50. As disgusting or revolting as you may find it, there is no one who hasn’t laughed at their friends when they stupid things on a dare. This movie pushes the edge and comes away with plenty of shrieks, gasps, flinches, and best of all, laughs.