Johnny Knoxville and his band of merry men are back for a third round of pranks, stunts and admittedly bad ideas, compiled for our entertainment and directed with intestinal fortitude by Jeff Tremaine. Frankly, I was hoping for more from the added third dimension, but most of this film still looks like it was shot on camcorders. (Do look out for that flying dildo, though.) It's everything you'd want in a Jackass movie: pee, poop, puke and sweat; little people and a hugely fat guy; repeated genital trauma; guys approaching middle-age wearing only thongs; and mind-boggling injuries. Also: Beavis, Butthead, Will Oldham, a donkey, an attack dog, a horned ram, a buffalo herd, two scorpions and 10,000 angry bees.
It's all wrong wrong wrong, but sometimes you need uncomplicated laughs. I find the stunts more entertaining than the pranks, which seem almost passé in our reality-is-fake-footage times. But man vs. jet exhaust, or pinning a tail on a live donkey: Where else can you see this stuff? I also dig the surreal, why-not nature of some throwaway bits: Who thinks of filling a closet with beach balls and "surfing" out of it? Good for laughs are the off-the-cuff remarks of the gang. It's one thing to see a flatulence master play a trumpet with his asshole. But when an adjacent Jackasser quips, "Bringing jazz back to the working man," that's a low-culture high point. The rating is for Jackass fans only; all others should stay away.
