Movie Review by Zoe Fox
Starring: Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Ryan Dunn
Director: Jeff Tremaine
Another helping of sadomasochistic self-mutilation from the world famous Jackass boys.
Not much can be said about JACKASS that you don’t already know, the same wincingly dangerous and ‘more often than not’ obviously painful capers that shot the Jackass team to fame in the late 90’s are back in full force in this, their second, feature length outing.
For those that don’t know, the team, made up of Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Stephen ‘Steve-o’ Glover, Chris Pontius, Ryan Dunn, Wee Man, Preston Lacy, Dave England and Ehren McGhehey together with director Jeff Tremaine, who has been directing JACKASS from day one, came crashing onto our screen in 1998 via MTV. In this outing Spike Jonze – famous director of many music videos including several Beastie Boys videos, Björk’s ‘Its Oh So Quiet’ and Fatboy Slim’s ‘Rocker Feller Skank’ and ‘Praise You’, as well as making his feature film directorial debut with the film BEING JOHN MALKOVICH – produces along side Jeff Tramaine.
Due to the huge success of the MTV series they made the first movie in 2002, making the stunts, if possible, more gross, daring, stupid and sick (quite literally in a lot of cases).
This second movie for the team really is just more of the same without adding anything new. However this is what the boys do best with stunts like trying to catch large pythons in a kiddies’ ball pit and throwing bees into a locked limo with some of the team inside, performing colonic irrigation with a beer and generally throwing themselves into, on and off various things and there are plenty more truly disgusting and disturbing moments. But then as long as they are hurting themselves and each other it’s funny stuff.
A few harmless pranks on some of the unsuspecting public are fine as well, with some of the best in this being one of the team dressed up as a foul mouthed granddad and his equally foul mouthed grandson and another being the granddad’s balls.
There are of course plenty of moments that will make you cringe behind your hands, knees, cushion or the person sitting next to you, but like the adrenalin rush of a rollercoaster ride, this is what we love.
So yes, it’s retarded. Yes, it’s depraved, dangerous and downright revolting, but for some reason we find it absolutely hilarious and, without getting into a lengthy argument about the state of society today as to why we find this sort of thing funny, lets just say it’s a winning formula that has lost none of its shine in this movie.
