Published Oct 4, 2006
There’s something special about watching a movie and knowing that, years later, you’ll be able to say “hey! I saw that movie when the people in it were still alive!” Jackass Number Two is a hilarious oracle of coming disaster, a series of potentially-disastrous pranks all gone right. Now, a more-civilized individual might balk at breaking into riotous laughter at this Road Runner cartoon gone live-action, but not me, I loved it.
One nice thing about reviewing a movie like Jackass Number Two is that there’s no plot to recap, just the boys doing their usual idiot things. Rocket-powered shopping carts, snakes of various types, doorbells rigged to airbags, drinking horse semen, it’s all there, just like we expected from Jackass: the Movie and three seasons of Jackass on MTV.
Wait, drinking horse semen? Yeah, they did, from a cup, although they had to put a black bar over the actual drinking, you know, so it wouldn’t appear to be a sex act. Because we could take it for one (one does suspect that maybe these guys are more interested in the sex acts of horses than in sex with women, both from the utter lack of females in the movie and because of the excess of men hanging around in tighty-whities together). But, really, Number Two is a bit higher on the gross-out scale than the original, with a little more poop and puke than I really needed to see in a few more sketches than really needed them. Plus Johnny Knoxville bleeding profusely.
And Knoxville himself? In the past, he’d come off as a smart, good-looking guy who was maybe doing this for fun and to get his career started (I still don’t know why he hasn’t played the romantic lead in a movie, I’m sure the chicks would go wild). In this movie, however, we saw a little more of Johnny’s crazy side, and I think I can say with some confidence that he is totally off his rocker. The boy gets gored by yaks for fun, and he goads his co-stars into being blown up by anti-riot equipment, then sets them up to get slingshot-launched into closed loading bay doors. It may be the beer, it may be the pot (Bam, in particular, is colossally stoned in once scene), it may be having so many boys with so little total collective good judgement in one room, but something’s going wrong here.
Whatever that something is, I like it. Launched into the sky on an exploding rocket? Hidden pneumatic boxing gloves in hotel walls? Midgets and fat men, attached by bungee, falling from a bridge? It doesn’t get any better than this. Plan to spend ninety minutes laughing, and plan to wish there was at least another thirty still coming at the end. Which, I guess, means Jackass 3 is on its way. One is tempted to wonder how we will all respond when, in that film, bloody, dismembered limbs fly across the screen; I am pretty sure, however, that the victim/stuntman would have wanted us to laugh, just as we did here, both with them and at their stupid asses. Ha! Jackass.
I didn’t read your whole entry, because I want to be surprised by the stunts… but I at least got that you liked it. We both liked the first one, and I am pretty sure we will like the second one. There is an interesting line drawn in this kind of can’t-turn-your-eyes-away shocking stunt performances. Jackass = good; but Ultimate Fighting = horrible (as in, zero interest). http://modblog.bmezine.com/ = great; but Faces of Death type stuff = repulsive.
Honestly, I’m a little creeped out by that whole “hanging people from hooks” thing. But then I’m a little funny; I have a Tivo season pass to Ultimate Fighting.
(Then again, I’ve taken Tae Kwon Do, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Krav Maga, and Karate, so I kind of grok the action in the ol’ UFC.)
wonderful assessment/summary, wade. and i agree that these guys can’t be that lucky all of the time — one of them must eventually meet his demise during a stunt. but until then, i’m thankful and thoroughly entertained by the antics as well.
(horse semen consumption was gross but the worst antic for me this go-round was steve-O putting the fish hook through his cheek as though he were piercing his ear. fucking hell that made me quesy. a close second was the crabs-infested pube beard — and if that’s not a good advertisement for this film, i give up!)
knoxville also sorta kinda played the romantic lead in a film called ‘daltry calhoun’ that also starred juliette lewis. it was an okay film and he was an okay actor.
cya at dinner — soon!
Somehow the pubes beard didn’t bother me, except insofar as it showed me that there was no moral basis for all these escapades (who would make a man fear for his life and then, just to add a little texture to it, give him a pubes beard?). The fishook, well, that actually made me feel sick, which, since certain exes had a tendency to make me watch those surgery shows on TLC, I didn’t think could happen anymore. I did notice that the pussy filed the barb off of the hook, though, so I’m not sure if it counts.
Nauseating or not, the bizarre ethical dilemma of actualy financially supporting this stupidity was actually a nice break from the cavalcade of embarathy on TV.