'Jackass 3D' directed by Jeff Tremaine.

Produced by: Johnny Knoxville, Jeff Tremaine and Spike Jonze.

Written by: Jackass cast.

Year of release: 2010.

Run time: 94 minutes.

Studio: MTV Films.

Budget: $20 Million.

Gross Revenue: $170, 256, 125.

The last three movies that I’ve reviewed on this site have been—what I like to call at least—main-course movies. That is, they provide (or at least attempt to provide) nourishment for the wandering soul. However, as regular readers will probably know, it is a recurring trend on this site for your humble reviewer to see a whole bunch of main-course movies in a row. This leaves me feeling bloated and sometimes depressed. In this mindset, I feel it is appropriate to enjoy a few dessert or snack movies. When it comes to good snacks, you really can’t go past Jackass.

I’m sure that there are a lot of film critics out there that look down their noses at Jackass—believing it to be nothing but low brow entertainment. Its association with MTV (a corporate experiment into ‘cool’ that I think is largely obnoxious) is unfortunate, but there is a lot more going on in Jackass than I think these critics realise. Although Jackass 3D, like the films that came before it, remains plotless, there is a lot more to the franchise than many give it credit for. Indeed, I’m sure that there is a postgraduate essay to be written on the philosophy of being a jackass.

If an idea is a fossil, as Stephen King says it is, then I think the point of this review is to perhaps unearth an idea I’ve had about Jackass, pretty much since I started watching it back in my senior year of high-school. The jackasses, as I shall refer to the cast as a collective, represent perhaps the most favourable strain of nihilism that I’m willing to accept. If nihilism, is the negation of meaning from life itself, Jackass represent a playful acceptance of the doctrine. The moment Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God, a lot of us were set free from the authoritarian and abusive relationship we had with him. We were also simultaneously forced to ask ‘In the absence of meaning, why should we continue to live?’

The answer according the Johnny Knoxville and co. seems to be to have as much fun as you can by risking your life in hilarious, cartoonish ways. And if you’re not doing that, you might as well laugh at someone that is. Now, I’m not sure if any of the jackasses are religious, and it’s likely that some of them probably are. If they are, they probably might read this and say that I’m over intellectualising Jackass, and that might be true. However, I think that the franchise has garnered such social popularity, amongst all kinds of people (even my mum enjoyed the first movie), purely because it taps into subconscious realisation that there is no inherent meaning to life.

Jackass strips away a lot of the pretension that comes with thinking about nihilism. Whilst the various existential philosophers (Sartre, Camus etc), who are confined to the reading lists of university courses, search for establishing meaning in a meaningless world, the Jackasses say “Fuck it, let’s launch Steve-O one-hundred feet into the air in a porter-potty.” The fact that they have been allowed to do so, well into their thirties, speaks to how funny society finds them, and how an open-market system rewards popularity above any other moral agenda.

In addition to its somewhat sophisticated philosophical commentary, or even to exemplify it, the Jackass franchise also has character development if you look hard enough for it. The best example of this that is evident in Jackass 3D is certainly Steve-O, the loveable clown who is notorious for his alcohol/drug habits and mental health problems. This time, Steve-O is sober, and you can really tell. He approaches stunts with a renewed sense of anxiety. During one stunt that involves him taking a baseball to the nuts, he actually gets so anxious that he walks away from it temporarily. He does return to complete the stunt, but says “Why do I have to be Steve-O?” into the camera. It’s a pretty existential question, but it’s not one that Steve-O dwells on with any seriousness. He asks it, and then takes a baseball to the nuts like a champ. You really get a sense that for this crew of jackasses, that the meaning they’ve carved for themselves is to find the humour in the agony of existence.

A reviewer, I forget who, commented that watching the anxiety of jackasses as they being attempting the stunts, is funnier than the stunts themselves. I don’t know if that’s true; anxiety without a pay-off just isn’t satisfying—the two come together like a burger and a bun—but there is something to be said for watching the ageing jackasses get more anxious with old age. When Steve-O refuses to run through a gauntlet of cattle-prods and electric tasers by saying “I think I’m going to have a fucking panic-attack...”, it’s funny because Steve-O is no longer invincible. However, like Sisyphus, he still manages to run the gauntlet not because the world is particularly beautiful, but because it’s just fucking funny.

Four stars: