Jackass 3D review

How do you even begin to talk about a movie like Jackass 3D? I mean, there’s no plot, there’s no story, there’s no acting. It’s just a loose collection of crazy stunts and physical violence performed by middle-aged millionaires with way too much time on their hands. So, basically, it’s like any other action movie produced this year, but with a much lower budget and a much higher profit potential.

At this point, you know what Jackass is about. It’s the perfect combination of reality television and a scripted program, with wacky stunts intermingled with random craziness, ‘man on the street’ reaction shots, meshed with performance art. As sheer spectacle, you can’t go wrong with Jackass 3D.

Some of it is hilarious. Some of it is awfully unfunny. Some of it is just plain awful. However, unlike most of the so-called 3D movies released this year, Jackass 3D is in actual three dimensions. It was filmed as a 3D movie, and they make maximum use of every single horrible thing they send flying towards the camera.

Jackass 3D is the third film in the Jackass series, as well as a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the television, film, and home video phenomenon that began in 2000. The usual crew of Jackasses was also brought back for the film: Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Bam Margera, Danger Ehren, Chris Pontius, Preston Lacy, Wee Man, Ryan Dunn, Dave England, and the rest of their friends, guest stars, and hangers-on.

Jackass 3D is the kind of thing you’ll either like or you won’t. If you don’t mind gross-out humor, horrifying injuries, projectile vomit, flying poo, urine, male nudity, and genital trauma, you’ll probably love most of the goings-on in Jackass. Even if that’s not your particular bag, and you just enjoy watching people get hurt, you’ll probably still enjoy good portions of Jackass. I’m normally not one for the things the Jackass crew finds funny, but I have to own up to having laughed at some of the things they did. As someone who loves to watch a stunt go wrong (where no one gets injured), there were quite a lot of things in the movie I enjoyed.

The best thing you can say about Jackass 3D is that they spared no expense in capturing the mayhem. Director Jeff Tremaine and cinematographers Lance Bangs, Dimitry Elyashkevich, and Rick Kosick are armed with state-of-the-art Phantom high-speed cameras, which means that the slow motion images captured are spectacular. Breathtaking, even, when they’re not grimace-inducing. It’s kind of a waste of a good camera, but damn if it’s not amazing to behold.

It’s hard to assign a rating to a flick like Jackass 3D, which is going to pretty much divide people into two camps: those that generally enjoyed themselves and those that didn’t enjoy themselves. A lot of it depends on your tolerance for feces and urine.

For most of the audience in the theater when I saw the movie, Jackass 3D was exactly what they were hoping for (or judging by the groaning that was done, what they feared). For me, some bits worked and some bits did not work. Kind of like the original show, it was just a bunch of stuff thrown randomly into a blender and smeared onto the big screen. When it worked, it was hilarious. When it didn’t, it was horrible.

US correspondent Ron Hogan followed around four of his college friends one night, watching as they performed their own versions of Jackass stunts. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt. Find more by Ron at his blog, Subtle Bluntness, and daily at Shaktronics and PopFi.