Jackass: The Movie USA, R,
85 m, 2002
MTV’s “Jackass” is an admittedly
diverting collection of video clips featuring a posse of strikingly pertinacious
daredevils merrily partaking in all sorts of bone-crushing, death-defying
mayhem, but the R-rated Jackass: The Movie
ups the ante on the controversial program by admitting stunts of an even more
jeopardous and repulsive variety. Led by Johnny Knoxville, the wacko
“Jackass” brigade will do anything it seems to top their last outrageous
feat—they’re like drug-addicts unprofitably trailing a bigger high, or
worse, porno fans who grow weary of commonplace screwing and eventually turn to
bondage and bestiality before degenerating completely into snuff. You get the
queasy impression halfway through Jackass
that these interminably sniggering nincompoops won’t be contented until they
do themselves in. The go-for-broke nihilism recalls the thematic underpinnings
of David Fincher’s angst-fueled masterpiece Fight
Club, and the moment when Tyler Durden contends that the ensanguined bedlam
born of his underground boxing fraternity must be taken to another level or shut
down completely approximates the Jackass
approach to one-upmanship. Upon comparison, Tyler doesn’t appear so much a
kindred spirit to the deranged jackal Knoxville as he does a kinder, gentler
forerunner. But both of these men are products of their time—a time where
political correctness and the feminist revolution has left white heterosexual
males uncertain of their standing in American society. Their deleterious
behavior functions as a valve in which to release all their suppressed rage.
(Despite its apparent downside, self-mutilation is something you at least have
control over.) The ticklish capers in Jackass
also say something about the frustration of our culture’s more ambitious
performance artists: after piercing, scarring and amputation ceases to shake an
audience, drafting one’s own demise may the only remaining act that’ll get
the job done. When performance artist Julian Priest (David Bowie) performed
surgery on himself in the penetrating Tony Scott-directed “Sanctuary”
episode of ShowTime’s “The Hunger,” the apathetic response from his jaded
public necessitated that he hack off his own limbs and bleed to death on camera
in order to recoup their favor and reestablish himself as the art world’s
preeminent enfant terrible. I trust the boys of MTV’s “Jackass”
won’t go that far in their quest for immortality, but God knows they come
close in this big screen treatment. The more ambitious stunts in Jackass:
The Movie owe a great deal to the remarkable athleticism of Buster Keaton,
but the coarser frivolity is probably indebted to the half-witted slapstick of The
Three Stooges. Indeed, slapstick was the earliest form of screen comedy, and Jackass knows that audiences will never tire of watching people
falling square on their butts. The most obvious difference, though, between the
unrehearsed footage in Jackass and
that of the “Candid Camera” variety is that Knoxville’s loons seek out the
precariously placed banana peel. The filmmakers wisely dispense with any
pretense of a narrative; Jackass is
simply a string of progressively wilder vignettes, all shot on hand-held video.
With the exception of an incongruently well mounted opening title sequence and
an over-the-top epilogue lensed on 35MM, Jackass:
The Movie looks exactly like its television precursor. But that’s a plus
for if anything would’ve sucked the life out of the material it would’ve
been applying a high-gloss Hollywood sheen to the perilous proceedings. From
years of televised news reports and hidden camera gags, we’ve come to
associate the unflattering medium of videotape with our wintry reality. (Film
stock chronicles our fantasies.) Some have quibbled with the bargain-basement
look of Jackass, but directors like
Lars Van Trier would’ve been lauded for this type of daring minimalism. Things get off to a terrific start with an excruciatingly funny sequence in which Knoxville rents a car and enters it in a demolition derby. The manic fender-bending results in Knoxville almost buying the farm: the front wheel of a competing car smashes through his windshield, the still burning rubber coming within an inch of tearing Knoxville’s chortling face off. When he returns the wrecked vehicle, he refuses to pay for the damages, and runs off down the street. But the concluding sham is about as disingenuous as when the “Bang Bus” boys cheat their promiscuous marks out of promised dough for sexual services rendered. We all know that the gag’s coda is staged because such chicanery would’ve landed Jackass’s jokers in the slammer. The same is also true of a crazed episode in which the guys vandalize a run-down miniature golf course; Paramount surely bought the derelict lot before Knoxville and his cronies ripped it up. It’s a judicious recommendation that children not see Jackass out of concern for them emulating the deadly stunts, but the picture’s feigned criminal activity is an even more compelling argument. Some of the action in Jackass
is inexplicably shot in Japan, where the boys dress up in panda suits and run
amok through the bustling streets, tumbling over garbage cans and aggressively
dog-piling into convenient marts. The rest of the buffoonery consists of the
boys firing bottle rockets out of their asses, eating urine-soaked snow cones,
and tightrope-walking over alligator pits. Yep, it’s all rather witless, but
I’d be a goddamned liar if I claimed that I didn’t find it amusing.
There’s something oddly liberating about a film that seeks to do little more
than induce its audience into blowing chunks, and on that decidedly unrefined
level Jackass: The Movie works. Congratulations, boys! I laughed. I cringed. I fell down and vomited. March 25, 2003 © Copyright 2007 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.
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