'Jackass' cuts the plot, goes for stunts
Shawn Newburg
Scene Movie Critic
Abbott and Costello, The Three Stooges and Buster Keaton are all rolling over in their graves after the recent release of "Jackass: The Movie." They are finally realizing that all that time they wasted on coming up with silly plots only took away from their time onscreen to perform their slapstick routines.
The men of the crew of Jackass, led by Johnny Knoxville, brilliant as they are with their comedy, finally cut away all that unnecessary extra stuff and get right to the heart of what every young male wants to see – toilet humor and guys getting hit in the balls.
And the result? A pretty funny movie.
Fans of the original Jackass television show, produced by MTV, will not be disappointed. Those who never got the humor of Jackass still will not.
Many of the stunts go beyond what the pranksters were ever allowed to get away with doing on television. From eating yellow snow cones to getting beaten mercilessly by Butterbean, the heavyweight boxer, the stunts are a little more dangerous than ones from the television show. Each stunt seems even funnier than the one preceding it. The best part of the movie is the suspense of waiting for what insane thing the guys will do next.
In comparison to the television show, the level of ingenuity and creativity of their stunts decreased. Rather than really doing any clever pranks, which were hysterical in the television show, the Jackass crew pretty much sticks to a slapstick, kick-in-the-groin type of humor. Although they do come up with really creative and funny ways of hurting themselves in order to make the audience laugh, they fail to pull any pranks more creative than butchering unsuspecting people's hair with hair clippers. The best pranks are, unfortunately, missing in this movie.
Audiences either love the humor of "Jackass: The Movie" or hate it. Audiences who like circus clowns hitting each other with bats, love watching any sort of wrestling entertainment or just can't get enough of home videos of dads getting kicked in the junk by llamas, will love "Jackass: The Movie." Audiences that do not find slapstick humor funny should probably go watch "Punch-Drunk Love."
All Scene Stories for Thursday, November 7, 2002
