IT'S JUST ME AND 'JACKASS': I caught "Jackass: The Movie" the other night, and I can't decide whether it's a hilarious, uproariously funny comedy, or the most reprehensible movie in recent memory- more likely than not, it's both.
Nothing more than a longer, much more explicit version of the popular and highly controversial MTV show, "Jackass" is near-non-narrative film in the tradition of "Congorilla," and isn't much more civilized. Starting with the entire cast rolling down the street in a giant shopping cart to the opera tune from "Carmen" that's used in every other movie trailer (and parodied in the trailer of '99's "South Park" movie), director Jeff Tremaine and the cast stage some memorable sight gags, such as when the cast rummages around Tokyo dressed as pandas. Like the show, "Jackass: The Movie" is at its best when it stages elaborate, "Candid Camera"-like setpieces, and also like the show the movie is at its worst when it resorts to garish gross-out humor. I don't know how it's in any way funny for a guy to urinate on a snow cone and then eat it.
Oh, and one more thing: "Jackass: The Movie" has an all-male cast, in several scenes the characters have their shirts off for no apparent reason, there are over a dozen nude scenes, and the cast seems to have an unnatural obsession with penises, testicles, male buttocks, and especially anuses, culminating in an extended sequence in which cast member Ryan Dunn has a toy car inserted in his rectum. And then, two minutes later, the movie ends with a cameo by Rip Taylor. I wonder if the legions of 12-to-14-year-old males who made "Jackass" the #1 movie of last weekend are aware that they were patronizing the gayest major studio movie of the year.