Review: Jackass 3D

5 mins read

The second 3D movie I ever saw was Jackass 3D (now playing at El Con and Park Place Malls).

My friends Bob and Michael and I went out to breakfast and ordered three kinds of egg plates. Bob got sunny-side up eggs when he ordered scrambled, my scrambled eggs were dry, and Michael got no eggs at all with his chorizo, then scrambled eggs when he wanted sunny-side up, and toast when he ordered flour tortillas. We all ordered and received water, and were charged for three iced teas. We decided we had to start the day over, in a different area. So we came north from 22nd and then headed east.

I assume you’d guess I like Jackass movies and episodes. No? Maybe you’ve never met me. I’m kind of boy crazy, and these movies are full of boys, doing boy things, and making jokes that are slightly funnier than those made by the boys filling all the skate videos that also rule. I saw the first Jackass film with my dad, and we laughed so hard we cried.

But just like I can’t watch a second season of Jersey Shore because of the inherent problematic detail of a cast of overnight celebrities pretending not to be completely affected by their newfound fame making a reality show even more unrealistic, I can buy into the Jackass franchise less and less.

It’s cool, in theory, that they try to own up to how rich they are by making spin-off shows that take them all over the world or show off their huge houses and skate ramps and weddings. It’s cool that they invite celebrities to show up and hang out in the movies because I’m sure most of the time these guys are hanging out with a bunch of famous people and hot girls. But most of the time, from mixing money, age, celebrity, and exhausting stunts, you get laziness. I almost wish this movie was about how lazy these guys are now. In one prank and in some out takes, very young women are present. Suddenly I’m more interested in the cast members’ relationships than I am in anything else they do.

The stunts in JA3D are mostly kind of boring if not totally overdone. They try to use the 3D thing and it’s not necessary or worth it. There are some good poop pranks, but I’m pretty over the rest. Knoxville looks too old and like he’s faking laughter. The now sober Steve-O looks scared and obsessive about the stunts he pulls, making them grosser and more painful for himself for no reason, the weirdness of which resonates in Knoxville’s apprehensive, unanswered cries of “Steve?”

The two guys sitting in the row behind us prefaced each stunt with a “This is gonna be awesome,” and left us with postscripts that moved along the lines of “We gotta get us a ________ (midget, really big ball, ram, donkey, one of those things, etc.).” Overall it was kind of a bummer of a Sunday, and we weren’t even hungover.

The end of the movie (this is not ruining it, I promise, it would be better if you knew not to wait around for the end of this part) is the guys from the movie plus Rivers Cuomo singing a song about memories while childhood pictures float over black and white footage from the first seasons of Jackass the TV show.

Before we were even out of the theater, Bob summed it up pretty nicely, as he usually does: “The world is really falling apart if even a Jackass movie has to get all melancholy at the end.”

-N. Stagg