Guerrillas on Parade. Review on Jackass Movie

''It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.'' -Macbeth

Jeff Tremaine’s Jackass: The Movie achieves mammoth heights in no-brow comedy and pleasingly serves the purposes of pleasing childish needs with all the intended perversity and mayhem one would expect from the infamous MTV prankster show. Purely accidental, the movie is momentous in that it is perhaps the first intentional-gross-out “docu-comedy” about prankster/stuntmen antics fuelled by altering substances and substantial amounts of foolhardiness, hence the title: Jackass. Neophytes and aliens to the MTV series will have little to no idea as to the point of the motion picture’s existence and will undoubtedly declare it as the most disgustingly traumatic injustice since Tom Green. Skin-deep fans will be surprised to know that Jackass: The Movie is not, in fact, the first of its kind to feature the gang’s stunts minus the censorship, for the CKY (Camp Kill Yourself) series, and its factions, has been long running (somewhat) underground.

A peculiar myriad composition of various shock flavors and prank hybrids never thought possible, and which were never meant as humanly possible – if that makes a lick of sense. The succinct gag-exercise is as off-putting as it is hilarious, and its disturbingly-merry band of half-wits only supplements a nauseating charm. Sprawling and universal in its widespread dispersion of nincompoopish, farcical attacks, Jackass extends (like the show’s European expedition) its clownery across the sea to Japan, as well as extends the show’s restricted coloring book. Unlike conventional narratives and even unlike most documentaries there is virtually no storyline to speak of, rather series after series of comic vignettes (some longer than others), which was anticipated. Unless you have acquired the production’s brand of outrageous humor or suchlike Jackass will most likely haunt your nightmares or enrage you with an incompetent crux similar to that of a sadistic America’s Funniest Home Videos.

A chaotic novelty of lugubrious pain and comic quantity Jackass is a deviation from human consciousness, characters and any relating kin, swapped for reckless stunt-dummy caricatures with mischievous smirks scrawled upon their faces. The controversies that will most likely arise (and has risen from the show) are the incidences of copycat stunts by amateur imitators. Personally (if you’ll allow me to vent momentarily) I feel that anyone looking to make a court case of their injuries against Jackass or any affiliates for reasons of being persuaded and such, rightly get what they deserve and the worse the better. Disregarding the surfeit of warning labels and poison symbols planted throughout, an infantile nut is bound to attempt a few stunts, but for others this will serve as pure Ludivico method.

For those unfamiliar with the show let me recap its participants; the Jackass crew includes a cast of skaters, an ex-circus clown, actors, stuntmen/extreme athletes, and just plain oddities, led by charismatic host Johnny Knoxville (AKA Philip John Clapp) who’s since become quite famous (MIB II, Big Trouble.) Others include Bam Margera, Steve-o, Chris Pontius, Jason “Wee-Man” Acuna, Preston Lacy, Ryan Dunn, Dave England, and Ehren McGhehey; with occasional appearances by Brendan DiCamillo, Raab Himself, Spike Jonze (co-creator), etc. And sprinkled randomly throughout the film are, of course, celebrity walk-ons from the likes of Tony Hawk, Mat Hoffman, Henry Rollins, and a very gratuitous Rip Taylor, who evoked more confusion than laughs in the younger audience.

Like that barrage of names, the jokes and pranks come at a kinetic pace with everything from harmless social improvisation to stomach-churning masochism in nth degree vehemence and suspense. Filmed with an eloquent 35 mm (as opposed to the jerky, handheld digital work that dominates the movie), the operatic title scene positions the gang mounting a behemoth of a shopping cart down a bridge while a bombardment of explosive devices spew rock and dust into the wheeling death cart’s path against “O Fortuna” (which works well when reading the Macbeth reference), which finally hits its mark and the boys launch into a market stand of fireworks. From there the gags include everything from demolition derby with a rental car to self-inflicted paper cuts, from wasabi-sniffing to masquerading as mischievous elderly folk, and finally, from toy car-anal insertion to the glorious destruction of golf carts and an animal-themed mini-put.

Ineffectual at storytelling and pointless beyond the point of illogicality, Jackass is nonconforming for appraisal and applause, considerably graced with excellent gag timing and inventive guerrilla-prank approaches. The infectious goofball charm that the cast often exudes loses some of its good-hearted, innocently sophomoric quality when transferred to the profanity-laden and unrestricted realm of cinema, but then again, censorship is fascist and bleeping is quite obnoxious. Intact from the days of television is the homoerotic sensuality (several scenes feature nude or almost nude men) among the fellows that is gleefully cloaked under laughter and a subtext heavy with nihilistic tendencies.

Jackass: The Movie is a vagarious delight free of pretense and/or aloof style engaging with comely, improvised performances on an affable and low-budget feel (despite a twenty-five million budget, which must have been reserved for bailing the gang out of continuous trouble) in genial acquiescence to the utterly amateurish production values, but then again that stays in the vein of the beloved show. With quasi-brilliance the film warrants laughs and giant ones at that, but it also grills the witnesses with horrific sights of self-mutilation and endangerment like a cruel, sadomasochist torturer poking an open wound and grinning.