Granted, it is a perverse fantasy.
But consider the material: In 100 years, when a future generation digs up our pop-culture detritus, they will think better of 2006 if they find nestled in a time capsule the DVD of “Jackass: Number Two” (the rated and unrated versions out today; $29.99 )
instead of “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.”
Please follow me further into this dark conceit. First, let’s be clear: Sacha Baron Cohen’s satire is a full-on movie. A road-trip romp, it has a start, a flabby middle, and an endpoint.
Even with its tacked-on, kinda sweet musical finale, “Jackass Two” is really just a scattershot series of jaw-dropping, gray-matter-defying stunts and pranks.
Yet as hard as it is to believe (and sometimes stomach), the Johnny Knoxville vehicle, even as it careens and mows down its own, carries a kinder, gentler message. To wit: Some masochism can be fun and funny.
The thing that vexes about “Borat” has been how smart-pants and bigots alike are united by its mean-spiritedness. The Running of the Jews gag works for the anti-Semite and the anti-anti-Semite. Making fun of rubes and bigots (drunken ones at that) is smug pleasure that doesn’t teach me anything fresh about bigotry American-style.
Call me a laugh with ’em, not at ’em type. Or, it’s quite possible that I just feel safer
in the company of Knoxville and friends.
There aren’t many people of color. Those on camera (members of the rap group Three 6 Mafia) dare Dave to eat horse scat. He does. (Did I mention people throw up during some of the stunts?)
And once you discount Spike Jonze’s bizarro appearance as a frigtening old
woman with breasts sagging to her belly button, there is only one woman featured in this “Jackass”: Bam Margera’s mom, April.
A mother – how perfect is that? She never seems like a sap, just the personification of the appalled voice that somewhere in these fella’s heads must ask “whywhywhy are you doing that to yourself?”
When Bam shows up at her home to reveal the brand (bad) on his hiney, she says: “What is that!? Bam, that is so infected. That doesn’t look good. He’s going to have that for life. You’re going to have that for life!”
To the friend that wielded the makeshift branding iron: “Why did you burn him in the first place?” Answer: “Because it was funny.” And, sigh, it was.
There is another way to view “Jackass” masochism: While fully embraced, it doesn’t come with didactic lessons. Knoxville is no Mel Gibson. This is masochism as an extreme sport.
Here are some favorite (printable) lines from the movie and its making-of feature: “Dude, that hurt so bad.” “I’m having an anxiety attack.” “I never have my daughter around when we’re doing ‘Jackass.”‘ (Knoxville) “Are you all right, buddy?” “We have a medic inside.”
“Are you crying?”
“Yeah,” says snake-a-phobe Margera with a sniffle.
“My whole body aches, and I feel pretty much like I humiliated myself and others,” says Ehren McGhehey at the end of the featurette. Though honestly, he is the most punk’d member of this developmentally arrested fraternity. Why? Because, jokes Knoxville, sitting with director Jeff Tremaine, “Blunt force trauma really produced great noises.”
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com.
