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It’s amazing what people will do to others and to themselves in the name of entertainment. In “Jackass Number Two,” a movie that sinks to the deepest depths for its practical jokes and then digs even lower for good measure, people are shot at with 500 mph rubber ammo, drink horse semen and are branded with the insignia of a penis.
You’re either laughing with these guys or you’re not, and for the sake of anyone sitting through the 95 minutes of mayhem let’s hope you know what you’re in for. Here is a movie that is so awesomely juvenile and so primitively idiotic that it doesn’t take long to stop thinking it’s stupid and start laughing right along with the often hysterically funny skits.
Similar to the first film, which was released in 2002 and was based on a show produced by MTV, the content is comprised of Johnny Knoxville and friends Steve-O, Bam, Chris, Ryan, Dave, Ehren, etc., as they commit the most heinous and dangerous stunts imaginable, most of which are done with the sole intention of amusing or degrading themselves. There are also more gross-out gags in this film than the last, including a $200 bet to eat horse manure, a preponderance of human fecal matter, and an old grandma (Spike Jonze) who constantly exposes her sagging and unsightly breasts.
Other skits range from pure idiocy — “Medicine Ball Dodgeball” in the dark, a bungee jump combining the heavy-set Preston and the diminutive Wee Man, and “Beehive Limo,” in which Knoxville dumps a container of bees into a limousine while some of the guys are locked inside — to legitimately dangerous, as in the “Tire Roll,” in which two men are put inside a tire and roll down a hill, skiing down the stairs at the home of Bam’s parents, and “The Gauntlet,” which features a skateboarding ramp that people try to cross while others throw heavy bags of sand their way.
If anyone has the worst time of it it’s Steve-O, who takes a fishhook through the mouth, a leech in his eye and beer in his anus (the use of the plunger is one of the most crudely hilarious delights the film has to offer). He’s also the victim of “The Fart Mask,” in which Preston farts into a funnel and the smell goes directly to Steve-O’s head, which is enclosed in a space-suit type mask. Vomiting ensues.
The movie is at its best when it sticks to rudimentary gags such as these, and begins to feel strained when it invests in extended practical jokes, such as a relatively unfunny terrorist-themed skit toward the end of the movie. For the most part, though, Knoxville and director Jeff Tremaine do a great job of eliciting collective “oooohhhs” and groans of repulsion from the audience.
Can “Jackass Number Two” be considered a “good” movie given that so much of it is so vile and disgusting? I’ve always believed that movies set their own standards for quality by making their ambitions clear and trying to fulfill them; there can be little argument that all this movie wants to do is leave the audience in gut-busting laughter, with a little awe and disgust thrown into the mix. And because it succeeds triumphantly in doing so, I have no reservations about recommending it to those who aren’t faint of heart.
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