JACKASS NUMBER TWO

US, 2006, 92 minutes.
Johnny Knoxville, Steve- O.
Directed by Jeff Tremaine.

One of the most irritating things one can see on screen is a group of grown men laughing uproariously at idiotic pranks that they have pulled on one another – and their expecting us to laugh just as much.

Actually grown men is not quite correct: physically grown (and there is far too much evidence of this) but psychologically and emotionally grown (very little evidence of this).

Anyone who pays to see the Jackass films knows exactly what they are going to get: a group led by Johnny Knoxville getting up to a host of humiliating and/or pain-inducing stunts, many of which are body functional. Given that they make each other the butt of jokes (with an extraordinary number of jokes of butt) and that women are almost absent from these proceedings (some of which are literally anal retentive), it would be interesting to hear what a Freudian psychologist would say about the proceedings.

Anyone of an introverted disposition will shudder at some of the episodes. Anyone of an intuitive disposition will be horrified at some of the very sensate and down-to-earth stunts. But, it is a model of respectability compared with its British counterpart, Dirty Sanchez – the Movie. (However, the reviewer – a woman in her twenties – in the London Metro gave Jackass Number Two five stars and had it on top of the recommended list for the week, referring to it as coming ‘near to cinema purity’. Purity is not the first word that comes to mind in watching Jackass movies.)