JACK ASS 3 D
By Gary Murray
Starring Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, and Chris Pontius
Directed by Jeff Tremaine
Running time 100 min
MPAA Rating R
Selig Film Rating Cable
Jack Ass 3D starts with Beavis and Butthead talking to the audience and explaining how the 3-D effects are used in the film. Beavis beats Butthead and Butthead is amazed by how realistic the effects work. It is truly one of the high points of the film.
Then we meet the cast with a rainbow background. Soon they are attacked and beaten and splattered with paintballs. This is all done in real time, much like a documentary. The emphasis is to see how much pain they can inflict on each other and how funny it is to see your friends beaten and humiliated.
The opening stunt is a giant high-five hand on springs. Different members of the cast are unexpectedly hit with the artificial digits, some holding soup and some with flour. We get a series of stunts with the boys jumping into a giant pool using a slingshot and various wheeled devices. Another stunt is bee hive tetherball which is exactly as it sounds, resulting in very angry African honey bees. The most cleaver bit of stunt work happens when the guys decide to reenact the Evil Knievel stunt of jumping over the Snake River Canyon. Their mini-bike version has much the same outcome as the original.
While the majority of Jack Ass 3D is made up of dangerous stunts there are breaks of foul silliness. We get a train set diorama with a volcano and as soon as it erupts. The joke is that the volcano in someone's backside and the exploding lava is fecal in matter. The most cleaver set up involves a midget cast starting a brawl and little people cops and tiny paramedics who arrive at the scene. The duped tall cast of the bar looked truly shocked.
There are odd bits there the guys hit each other Rocky style and in slow motion. Johnny gets run over by buffalo and clocked by an NFL player. It is backyard hi-jinks and rough house frat boy stunts that carry warnings at the front and back of the film that these stunts should not be tried at home and that the crew are professional stuntmen.
The film ends with a vile stunt of a sling shot port-a-potty full and launched into the sky. Steve-O takes the abuse like a deranged man, throwing up again and again as crap flies around his face and body. I guess no one is afraid of hepatitis in the world of Jack Ass 3D.
Jack Ass 3D is a movie for the kind of people who think that vomit and feces and urine are the three most ingenious comedy props of all time. More than once we see the cast and crew throwing up in 3-D glory. For the intended audience, frat boys and simpletons, this is comic manna. I just found the entire exercise disgusting.
